{"id":2065,"date":"2016-11-22T19:38:11","date_gmt":"2016-11-23T00:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonbaseball.com\/?p=2065"},"modified":"2016-11-22T19:38:11","modified_gmt":"2016-11-23T00:38:11","slug":"minnesota-twins-sign-jason-castro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2016\/11\/22\/minnesota-twins-sign-jason-castro\/","title":{"rendered":"Minnesota Twins Sign Jason Castro"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Ken Rosenthal<\/strong> of <strong>Fox Sports<\/strong>\u00a0reported Tuesday that the <strong>Minnesota Twins<\/strong> have reached an agreement on a three-year contract with catcher <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/c\/castrja01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jason Castro<\/a><\/strong>. The deal is said\u00a0to be worth $24.5 million.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Twins?src=hash\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#Twins<\/a> to sign free-agent catcher Jason Castro.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Ken_Rosenthal\/status\/801197935497216000\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">November 22, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Source: Castro deal with <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Twins?src=hash\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#Twins<\/a> will be for three years, more than $24M.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Ken_Rosenthal\/status\/801198534158479360\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">November 22, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Minnesota Twins Sign Jason Castro<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Minnesota was one of six teams rumored to have\u00a0expressed interest in\u00a0Castro, who hit 11 homers and drove in 32 runs in 113 games last season with the <strong>Houston Astros<\/strong>. The Twins were actively looking for a catcher to replace <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/s\/suzukku01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kurt Suzuki<\/a><\/strong>, who is set to hit the free-agent market and was not considered very\u00a0successful at\u00a0throwing out runners attempting to steal.<\/p>\n<p>Castro was a first-round pick by Houston in 2008 and played six seasons with the Astros. Although\u00a0he isn\u2019t known for his\u00a0efficiency\u00a0at the plate, the 29-year-old is well\u00a0known for his abilities defensively. He\u2019s widely\u00a0considered to be very good at calling\u00a0games, as well as framing pitches. According to <strong>Baseball Prospectus<\/strong>, Castro was ranked around 11th in\u00a0framing runs, which was above average in both the 2014 and 2015 seasons.<\/p>\n<p>New Minnesota executives <strong>Thad Levine<\/strong> and <strong>Derek Falvey<\/strong> wanted a catcher who\u00a0thrived doing just\u00a0that,\u00a0expressing the\u00a0fact\u00a0that it\u00a0would help a pitching staff that struggled last season\u00a0and saw the Twins lose a franchise-record 103 games. The\u00a0rotation\u00a0had an earned run average of 5.08, second-worst in the big leagues behind the <strong>Arizona Diamondbacks<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Castro has a career batting average of .232 with 62 home runs and 212 RBI in just over 600 games. His backup\u00a0for 2017\u00a0is\u00a0most likely going\u00a0to be <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/m\/murphjr01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">John Ryan Murphy<\/a><\/strong>. Murphy was with the Twins and <strong>Triple-A Rochester\u00a0<\/strong>after being\u00a0acquired in an offseason trade that sent <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/h\/hicksaa01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Aaron Hicks<\/a><\/strong> to the <strong>New York Yankees<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo:<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/598985174\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 64.141414% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/598985174?et=ktO1kTrATo9xz6Z6olEPaw&amp;viewMoreLink=off&amp;sig=iHZ57l9fqzOREGkonmXAutQFFf_MeRQK3vG-n4DRlS8=&amp;caption=true\" width=\"594\" height=\"381\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"margin: 0;\">\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports\u00a0reported Tuesday that the Minnesota Twins have reached an agreement on a three-year contract with catcher Jason Castro. The deal is said\u00a0to be worth $24.5 million. Source: #Twins to sign free-agent catcher Jason Castro. \u2014 Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 22, 2016 Source: Castro deal with #Twins will be for three years, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":313,"featured_media":2072,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13,35],"tags":[699,68,246,666,700,667,174,69],"class_list":["post-2065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-twins","category-news","tag-aaron-hicks","tag-baseball","tag-houston-astros","tag-jason-castro","tag-john-ryan-murphy","tag-kurt-suzuki","tag-minnesota-twins","tag-mlb"],"modified_by":"Josh Greenberg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/313"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}