Our annual preview of free company doesn’t embody projected locations without cost brokers. I don’t know if that has all the time been a site-wide editorial determination, however it’s one I wholeheartedly agree with. Predicting how a lot cash somebody will get is tough sufficient. Predicting which workforce out of many related groups will give that cash to them is actually guesswork; positive, matching names to groups has leisure worth, however it’s onerous to truly be good at it. Besides, when you made me predict the place Willi Castro would have signed earlier than this offseason began, I completely would have picked the Rockies, and voila: Castro agreed to a two-year, $12.8 million cope with Colorado on Thursday.
The Rockies haven’t been gamers in free company for a variety of years, although that seems to be altering. Earlier this month, they signed Michael Lorenzen to a $8 million contract, the most important deal they’ve given to a pitcher within the 2020s. Castro’s deal is the largest assure they’ve handed out to a free agent since Charlie Blackmon, and that hardly counts, what with him being a long-time Rockie signing the final deal of his profession and all. Actually, Castro is the workforce’s largest signing since Kris Bryant, which says quite a bit about how the previous few years have gone in Colorado.
What compelled the workforce to wade into the free agent place participant pool – the shallow finish, to make sure – for the primary time in years? Signing a great main league participant, that’s what. Castro is a flexible defender who received’t embarrass you offensively. In 2025 alone, he logged 100 innings at 4 totally different positions, plus cameos at shortstop and in middle area. He’s not a standout at any of these spots, however the sheer flexibility is inarguably helpful. Roster Castro, and you’ve got a pleasant backup plan practically in all places. He’s a switch-hitter, too, so he can shore up any of the positions the place you’d actually desire a platoon, no matter who his platoon accomplice is perhaps.
That’s precisely the position Castro performed for two-plus years for the Twins, and after they had been out of rivalry in 2025, they traded him to the Cubs and he did extra of the identical. The final time he had a single, everlasting defensive position was in 2021 with Detroit. The flexibility to backfill no matter his workforce wants most is simply too useful for him to finish up in a single place.
Protection is just half of the job, although. Castro isn’t fairly Ben Zobrist offensively. He’s not the type of hitter you have to get within the lineup, wherever he stands, like some utility gamers. From each side of the plate, he’s a singles hitter who swings and misses a bit greater than you’d like for a man with bottom-of-the-barrel bat pace and exit velo numbers. He makes up for that by placing the ball in play early in at-bats with a swing geared for line drives and the occasional pulled fly ball.
Discovering the proper stability of aggression modified the arc of Castro’s profession. By way of three-plus years in Detroit, he swung so typically that he nearly by no means walked, and likewise wasted a variety of at-bats rolling over powerful pitches he had no probability of doing harm towards. In Minnesota, he dialed again his method from swing-at-everything to merely above common, and the change was speedy. He walked twice as typically, began pulling the ball within the air extra, and went from an 85 wRC+ in Detroit to a few straight years above 100 within the Twin Cities. He’s by no means going to be a fearsome energy hitter, however {golfing} errors over the pull-corner wall suited his offensive recreation very properly, giving him a bit ceiling to go along with the slap-hitting flooring.
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That’s not a steady offensive method, although. Beneath-average energy and below-average plate self-discipline imply that Castro is susceptible to some chilly streaks when every thing isn’t clicking, and the regression monster struck onerous and quick after his commerce to the Cubs final summer time. Over two months and 110 plate appearances, he noticed just about every thing go improper. He couldn’t get the ball within the air, and he notably couldn’t pull it within the air. He whiffed extra and walked much less. His BABIP cratered. By the point October rolled round, he’d misplaced his tremendous utility position; he barely performed within the final week of the season and solely batted twice because the Cubs bowed out within the NLDS.
That model of Castro – 40 wRC+, meh protection – wouldn’t have a job within the majors. However it will be foolish to anticipate {that a} unhealthy month and a half is a greater indicator of Castro’s future than the earlier two and a half years. We’ve a ton of projection programs right here at FanGraphs, and so they all anticipate Castro to place up a 2026 batting line that appears quite a bit like his career-to-date marks, with a wRC+ within the 90s and low double digit homers.
Add all of those expertise collectively, and you find yourself with a man who might play for each workforce in baseball, even when he’d be on the bench for a lot of of them. He doesn’t have a carrying software within the conventional sense, however that’s as a result of the carrying software is a scarcity of true weaknesses. He received’t kill you on protection no matter the place you set him. He doesn’t drag down an offense like many backups do; even when he’s not one in all your workforce’s greatest 5 hitters, you’d need to be fairly dang good earlier than you’d anticipate him to be one in all your worst. He’ll swipe the occasional base. He’s nonetheless in his 20s. There are quite a lot of team-controlled bench gamers on playoff contenders who I’m nearly sure Castro will outproduce in 2026.
Proper, however, why did the Rockies signal him then? I’ll degree with you: I don’t fairly get it, which makes it very Rockies. They’re going to have him within the lineup each day, and doubtless principally at third base. In any case, he’s their largest free agent signing in years! His defensive versatility isn’t notably helpful to them, provided that Ezequiel Tovar and Brenton Doyle, the incumbent shortstop and middle fielder respectively, are two of their greatest gamers. Adael Amador, a 22-year-old second baseman, goes to get an extended have a look at the keystone. The outfield appears to be like fairly platoon-y already even with out Castro within the combine.
Now, is Castro going to be probably the greatest gamers on the workforce? Completely. He’s one in all solely 4 Rockies hitters we venture for 1 WAR or extra – issues are fairly grim in Denver in the intervening time. However is he going to maneuver the needle for them? I don’t see how. The entire promise of Castro is that he raises your flooring, however the Rockies want ceiling. Once you’re filling out the again half of your roster, Castro’s 1.4 WAR projection is mouth-watering. Once you’re looking for an on a regular basis starter and offensive chief, it’s simply not adequate.
I’m to see what course the Rockies take underneath Paul DePodesta. For too lengthy now, they’ve been doing the organizational model of milling about aimlessly, shuffling by means of next-big-thing prospects and including fringe veterans who don’t actually match the remainder of the room. That’s not how the remainder of the league behaves. And whereas zigging when everybody else zags is usually a fruitful technique, you may’t zig immediately right into a ditch, yell “we’re totally different!,” and anticipate that to work. The Rockies spend, and so they convey within the crowds, however they haven’t turned that into an internally constant team-building technique, and their rosters lately have clearly mirrored it.
I anticipated DePodesta to shake issues up, for higher or worse. Signing Castro, although? That’s giving old-Rockies vibes. Is that this all that totally different from signing Jurickson Profar three years in the past? What about Kyle Farmer and Thairo Estrada final winter, or Jose Iglesias earlier within the decade? Certain, Castro might be higher than these guys had been on the time of signing, however that’s a distinction in diploma, not in class.
I feel this deal will in all probability work out, within the sense that Castro shall be a useful contributor to the Rockies. He fairly clearly makes their workforce higher, and it’s not my cash. However once more, zigging the place everybody else is zagging isn’t useful per se; it’s solely useful if zagging is now underpriced. And the league’s wholesale abandonment of the center class of free agent hitters – guys like Castro have been getting much less and fewer lately, to the purpose the place I’ve redone my free agent contract prediction mannequin to account for it – seems to be a sensible transfer from a team-building perspective. Why go to free company for this type of hitter when you may develop them?
I assume the joke is that the Rockies haven’t been capable of develop them, and thus that is the next-best choice, however that’s not a satisfying reply to me. Possibly they want guys like this within the transitional state to the fantastic future the brand new entrance workplace envisions. Possibly I’m simply approach off the mark on how they’ll use Castro, and so they have an modern plan that can have me brushing egg off my face by midseason. Possibly they wanted to signal a flexible hitter as a result of they’re simply so bursting with attention-grabbing prospects that they want backup plans at a variety of positions, however don’t know which of them till they see how their younger hitters adapt to the majors.
Extra probably, although, is that in a yr, they’ll be madly shuffling issues round to attempt to stability getting Castro’s 90 wRC+ within the lineup subsequent to some new prime prospects seeking to break in. The excellent news is that not less than that ought to be straightforward to do – he is perhaps probably the most shuffleable bat in baseball. The unhealthy information is – properly, I’ve been delivering sufficient unhealthy information on this article that I don’t really feel the necessity to spotlight much more. I like Castro’s recreation fairly a bit, and I want the present construction of the game incentivized extra good groups to signal guys like him. However it doesn’t, and right here he’s on the Rockies. Who might have predicted?