Goodnight, Sweet Luis

My favorite personal favorite things about Luis Castillo were his badass theme music when he came up to bat, and the Zoidberg crabwalk he broke out whenever he had to track down an infield popup. I don't think it ever fooled a single runner into thinking he had lost the ball in the roof, but it was still endearing and thrilling for everyone else. I was initially upset to learn about this trade, but after the shitstorm that was the comments section after Joe Christenson's blog entry announcing the trade, have decided to reserve judgment just in case something happens between now and the Deadline. We may not be throwing up the white flag just yet, and even if not, there are certainly other good reasons to trade an aging infielder with an expiring contract, but I'll get more in on the potential impact with whatever developments do or don't happen tomorrow.

In the meantime, we didn't make things look especially difficult against what's apparently a pretty good Royals team now, getting a couple of runs early off a better-than-average pitcher and holding on thanks to another world-class performance by Scott Baker; another couple of outings like this and he'll be in the running for team MVP. Castillo's replacement in the leadoff spot had quite a night as well, going 3-for-4 for what up until Saturday night I would have called the Jason Tyner cycle with a single, double, and triple. We'll hope now that OFT can keep winning the games they need to win with Nick Punto once again all but assured of a regular lineup spot.