Atlanta Braves Spurned by Castro, Face Catching Conundrum

Jason Castro has accepted a deal with the Twins.  That severely limits the catching choices now available to the Braves.

The catching upgrade options are dwindling quickly for the Atlanta Braves.

Ken Rosenthal reported late this afternoon that the Minnesota Twins has landed free agent catcher Jason Castro on a 3 year deal.

Later reports seem to peg the number at $24.5 million.  This makes sense for the Twins, who were looking for a full time backstop.  For the Braves?  Kinda pricey for what they had in mind.

The Braves were looking for somebody to share time – perhaps more than half, perhaps less depending on who – with Tyler Flowers.  The idea of a 3-year deal was probably not terribly palatable to the team, but without that, it was clear that they wouldn’t even be in the running.

In the end, though, Atlanta is still left one anode short of a fully-charged battery.

So What Now?

We’ve talked catching… a lot… this off-season.  Most recently that happened here, which included a quick discussion of just this possibility.

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In short, the choices seem to be these:

• A broken Wilson Ramos, who requires at least half of the 2017 season to heal… and is still a medical risk beyond that.
• Nick Hundley.
• Trades for (generally speaking) either old veterans or really young minor league catchers.
• Matt Wieters
• Forget catching and bolster some other position instead (third base being the most likely target)
• Do nothing… which means Flowers and Anthony Recker – the latter being more-or-less the in-house version of Hundley.

Whether this gets resolved any time soon or not is anyone’s guess, though mine is “not real soon”.

There are a few reasons for that thought:

• Atlanta would like to wait as long as possible and check medical reports if they intend to take a serious look at Ramos.
• Trade ideas might take a while to germinate
• Nothing else demands that they move quickly
• This next news might just put the kibosh on everything:

Rut-roh.  Didn’t see that coming.  Hopefully not – obviously – but stranger things have happened.

Next: Riding to the Banks of the Chattahoochee

Will stayed tuned for new updates.