The Boston Red Sox shipped their No. 4 overall prospect Kyle Teel to the Chicago White Sox on Dec. 11 as part of a package that brought mound ace Garrett Crochet to Boston. The move was a big one for the Red Sox pitching staff, but left Boston’s catching pipeline depleted. Conor Wong, the Red Sox incumbent behind the plate, rates well below average in most defensive metrics for catchers.
The Red Sox were counting on Teel to take a permanent hold on the Red Sox catcher’s job within the next year or two. But a new catching opportunity appeared Friday. One Red Sox beat reporter, Chris Cotillo of MassLive, said that it “wouldn’t be hard to envision the Red Sox potentially getting involved here.”
The opportunity that is calling, per Cotillo, for the Red Sox to get “involved” arose when the reigning World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers, in a move that stunned both Dodgers fans and prospect-watchers throughout baseball, designated their former No. 1 overall prospect for assignment.
The Dodgers signed Diego Cartaya as an international amateur free agent out of Venezuela in 2018, when he was just 16 years old. Cartaya was considered one of the hottest international talents that year, and the Dodgers made sure he knew it by showering him with a $2.5 million signing bonus.
He rose rapidly through the Dodgers farm system, and by 2022 Baseball America ranked Cartaya as the top prospect in the Los Angeles organization. He kept that status in 2023, while being ranked in Baseball America’s top 25 prospects in baseball both years.
More MLB: Yankees Predicted To Trade $37 Million Star To Hated Division Rival At the Dodgers’ Rancho Cucamonga Quakes affiliate in 2022, Cartaya tore through Single-A pitching, putting up a .955 OPS with nine home runs in just 131 at-bats, after starting the season at the lower-level Single-A Great Lakes Loons. But when he was promoted to the Double-A Tulsa Drillers the following year, Cartaya stalled at the plate, mustering just a .189 batting average and .656 OPS, though he did belt 19 home runs.
His struggles continued at the Triple-A Oklahoma City Comets in 2024, and Cartaya was dropped back down to Tulsa midway through the season. When the Dodgers signed Korean Baseball League star Hyeseong Kim on Friday, the organization needed to clear room in its 40-man roster. The Dodgers DFA’d Cartaya to make that room.
The Dodgers now have five days to find an team willing to trade for Cartaya, or they may place him on waivers where all 29 other teams could place a claim on him. For the Red Sox, “getting involved” would mean parting with a lower-level prospect in order to grab a 23-year old player who, if he can find his batting stroke once again, could take over from the departed Teel as Boston’s catcher of the future.
