Hm, I’m talking myself into this a little. You could maybe get Castillo for Duran+ or Abreu and Grissom+, which solves 1B for Seattle by letting them use Raley there full time. They’d still have their top trade chip (Harry Ford) if they want to pursue a bigger bat, and the Red Sox would be able to sign a couple of tier-two FAs (like Teoscar and Eovaldi). Maybe I’m underestimating how much they’d let him go for.
This seems... like a terrible idea to me.
Castillo, when you consider that he's pitching in one of the very very very best parks in baseball to pitch in, would probably end up with an ERA like Kutter or Pivetta pitching for us full-time with the Monster in left field. His ERA+ last year was 101. Kutter was 98 and Pivetta was 103. PLUS Castillo is 31, the age when pitchers sometimes start to magically go poof (either getting injured or losing velo and effectiveness).
Would you trade Duran+ for Kutter Crawford if we were paying him 25 million a year? I don't think so.
I keep coming back to this... like when we people generate trade ideas on this board, it's always "let's take one of our very best performers and trade them away for a guy who might contribute a little more or a little less." When you're dealing major leaguers for major leaguers with other competitive teams you're often trying to get equal value back...which often leaves you having ultimately made a lateral move. (and in this case would involve trading the right to play Duran or Abreu or Grissom at a low cost for the next four to five years in order to pay a declining Castillo at 25 million a year)
It's bad business, and it's why
nobody has been able to provide many examples of these trades happening. It's almost
always prospects going back in a trade for pitching, and it's almost always with teams who aren't competitive who have guys in late arbitration who they're going to lose anyway. And what gets sent back is not very often particularly impressive unless you're trading for like, one of the very best pitchers in all of baseball who is on a bargain deal (like Sale).
And I still don't get why we're so obsessed with starting pitching when our starting pitching had the 7th best ERA in baseball. Our offense, meanwhile, was 11th in baseball with a 104 wrc+ (and there were 8 teams between 100-105, so they were basically mediocre). Trading away Wilyer or Duran would hurt us badly there.