The Winter Meetings are underway and folks, we have a rumor. Fascinating, I know. Anyways, even though our Atlanta Braves are apparently prioritizing starting pitching when it comes to improving their
squad, Braves President/GM Alex Anthopoulos did say that they wouldn’t let priorities get in the way of finding a deal that makes sense for them.
Apparently that includes adding another utility man to their fold. Jorge Castillo of ESPN is reporting that the Braves are interested in potentially adding free agent utility man Willi Castro to the squad. They’ll have to deal with competition though, as apparently both the Rockies and Pirates are also checking in on Castro as well.
Castro picked a pretty bad time to enter the offseason on a down note. Despite the fact that he was solidly productive for the Twins in the first half of the season, a trade to the Cubs didn’t go well for him at all and he ended up hitting just .170/.245/.240 with a .302 wOBA and 40 wRC+. Combine that with some rough defense and Castro ended up finishing his Cubs stint with a nasty-looking fWAR of -0.5.
With that being said, Castro was much better during the first half of the season as he looked more like himself at the plate with the Twins. Before the trade, Castro left Minnesota with a nice-looking slash line of .245/.335/.407 with a .327 wOBA and 109 wRC+. However, it didn’t matter if he was wearing Cubbie Blue or an interlocking “TC” on his hat because he just had a rough year overall with the glove as he finished 2025 with an OAA of -9. Oof! It’s entirely possible that this could be a blip since he’s been a perfectly fine defender for the past few seasons but his defense was lacking when he initially broke into the big leagues so there is definitely concern that this is simply Castro’s glove returning back to form.
For what it’s worth, this disappointing 2025 for Castro came off of the heels of two seasons where he produced 2.9 fWAR in 2024 and 2.5 fWAR in 2023 for the Twins, so it’s not like he’s too far away from being a reliably productive part of a competitive Twins club that made the Postseason back in 2023 and posted a winning record in 2024. If he returns to form, then bringing in Castro could be a nifty form of business for any team that decides to pick him up in free agency.
It’s actually somewhat interesting that the Braves are apparently interested in another utility man since they trade for Mauricio Dubón not too long ago With the Braves also suggesting that they’re going to go with a DH-by-committee going forward while also searching for depth in general, that is likely the path to playing time for Castro if the Braves did pick him up. Castro also has experience as a shortstop (and all over the rest of the diamond as well), so that could very well become the committee position in the infield if the Braves do decide to pair up Castro with Dubón to form a sort of a super utility platoon or something like that.
Either way, this is a decently fascinating rumor and I wonder if we’ll see anything come of it going forward. We’ll see what hapens!
