Do not try to trade Rusney Castillo for Cole Hamels (or anyone else)

Perhaps you've heard that the Red Sox have too many outfielder to fit on their 25-man roster. Perhaps you've heard that the Red Sox would be happy to have Cole Hamels pitch for them. Perhaps you saw Rusney Castillo hit a walkoff homer today, put all this information together, and blended into a tweet. Perhaps you are Jon Morosi:

Something to kick around . . . If Rusney Castillo for Cole Hamels is proposed, straight up, which team says no?

— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) March 26, 2015

I would like to answer this question: the Phillies.

Rusney Castillo has had one hell of a start to his Major League career. He had 40 very nice plate appearances in 2014, and has taken full advantage of his first spring training at bats after returning from an oblique injury. So that brings us up to about 50. And 50 plate appearances is close enough to zero as to make no difference, which means we know about as much about Rusney Castillo now as we did in 2014 when the Red Sox signed him.

Why is that important? Because he was a free agent back then. One the Phillies didn't sign. If the Phillies wanted Castillo at the price the Red Sox currently have him, they would have offered it to him. And while there's some minute possibility that the Phillies did offer him the same contract and Castillo chose the Red Sox over them, the difference between that offer and one that would have swayed him to Philadelphia is certainly not so great as Cole freaking Hamels.

No, except in cases where contending teams saw their outfield plans fall apart and are now desperate (and the Phillies are not a contending team), nobody should really value Rusney Castillo as highly as the Red Sox, and their valuation of him is pretty set in stone--or, rather, paper--at $72.5 million. Except in cases where the other team would be trying to dump an overpaid player (at which point the Red Sox would obviously pass), there's just no deal to be done here.