![]() My expectations aren’t nearly as high as they were for Clay Holmes when he arrived in the Bronx. He may be approaching the best version of himself, and that’s an exciting prospect. He hasn’t put together a stretch this long of keeping his walk rate below ten percent since 2017, when his K/9 was 5.2. Rather, he needed to align himself in the direction that would give him the best chance to attack the strike zone with consistency. You don’t want to fool around with what makes a player special. His position at hand break and foot strike are nearly identical. You do so by addressing the first thing that any pitcher does on the mound, and that is get in their stretch.įrom that point on, there really isn’t much that Castro has changed. It’s clear Matt Blake wanted to straighten out Castro. I’m not a big fan of using still shots in mechanical analysis, but the slider shows you that at peak leg lift, Castro’s shoulders are more aligned with home plate, rather than pointing towards a right-handed batter. He throws a side-arm slider with nearly 11 inches of horizontal run in the zone around half the time. There is still time to rebound since we’re working with these small samples, but either way, his primary pitch, the slider, has still been in the zone 15 percent more than it was in April.įor simplicity’s sake, let’s say the April Castro was the Mets Castro, and anything since then is the Yankees Castro, since there’s been more time for him to make adjustments. There was a jump in May that has regressed a little bit in his 4.1 innings pitched in June. To better understand if the shift is real, we should check out if Castro has seen a tangible change in attacking the strike zone. For a reliever, though, that’s just enough to start considering whether this change could be permanent or not. That month and a half has been only about ten innings worth of pitching. The sample size is certainly not significant, but two straight months of walk rates near six percent is a big first step. Let’s start with the walk rate, Castro’s biggest issue in his career. It still hasn’t resulted in him being a clear-cut problem out of the pen, but this type of progression will be a step-by-step thing. In the last few weeks, it’s becoming more and more apparent that Castro has changed in some way. Personally, I like to start with the eye test and use statistics and pitch data to affirm what I see. For a while, I was unsure if could see it. ![]() I’ve been waiting to see the signs of the Yankee reliever’s adjustments. I don’t care what the underlying specs are, that’s a scary sight for opposing hitters. Imagine a pitcher with a side arm 99 mph sinker who fills up the strike zone. ![]() That alone gave us valid reason to dream of what could be with Castro. This is the type of reliever Brian Cashman and the analytics department seem to be fond of nowadays. Despite his nasty stuff from an extremely glitchy arm slot, he struggled to ever put together a single season with a low ERA or a serviceable walk rate. His walk rate of 14.2 percent was in the bottom three percent of the entire league. Off the rip it was clear Castro would be a project. However, myself and the rest of Yankee fandom were hoping the trade would be a huge win, ala the Clay Holmes deal. Objectively, Castro was, and still is, the better pitcher from a performance and stuff perspective. When the Yankees acquired Miguel Castro from the New York Mets for Joely Rodriguez, I already thought the trade was a clear win.
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