The Twins announced their Opening Day roster this evening. Among the group was infielder Willi Castro, indicating Minnesota has selected his contract. Minnesota had a vacancy on the 40-man roster after losing Dennis Santana on waivers a couple weeks ago, so no additional move was necessary.
Castro, 26 next month, heads into what’ll be his fifth consecutive year logging some MLB time. He’d previously spent his entire career with the Tigers, hitting .245/.292/.381 over 303 games for Minnesota’s division foes. That included a .241/.284/.367 line over 392 plate appearances last season. The switch-hitter kept his strikeouts to a decent 20.9% clip but only connected on eight home runs while walking 3.8% of the time.
While Castro’s overall offensive production has been tepid, he’s been solid against left-handed pitching in his career. He owns a .275/.302/.409 slash in 306 plate appearances as a right-handed batter. By comparison, he carries a .233/.288/.370 line against northpaws, striking out significantly more often from the left side of the dish.
Detroit non-tendered him at the end of last season. Castro caught on with Minnesota on a minor league pact and picked up ten hits (including a trio of homers) in 40 at-bats this spring. A 19:3 strikeout-to-walk ratio isn’t ideal but the overall production was solid.
Castro is a versatile defensive option, albeit a player who has never really excelled at any one position. He’s logged a decent amount of playing time at both middle infield positions and the corner outfield spots, with sporadic work in center field and at third base. Public defensive grades haven’t been fond of his work anywhere, with particularly glaring reviews of his shortstop defense. That he’s able to play virtually anywhere nevertheless earns him a spot on the Minnesota bench as the Twins deal with a few injuries headed into the year.
Jorge Polanco is starting the year on the 10-day injured list as he works back from right knee issues that ended his ’22 campaign early. First baseman Alex Kirilloff is also opening the season on the IL, while top prospect Royce Lewis continues to rehab from last year’s ACL tear. Do-Hyoung Park of MLB.com tweeted this evening that Lewis is taking at-bats and could soon progress to running the bases. It’s a promising development but he’ll obviously still open the year on the injured list.
Nick Gordon is in the lineup as Minnesota’s Opening Day second baseman. He’ll presumably hold that role until Polanco returns, with Castro, Donovan Solano and Kyle Farmer on hand as depth infielders. Castro still has a minor league option year remaining, so the Twins could send him down to Triple-A St. Paul without having to run him through waivers now that he’s back on a 40-man roster.
3 of the 5 teams in the AL Central he has played for. White Sox or Royals next? Willi okay player, he actually has some late clutch hits in history.
Must’ve been the ghost man on third for Cleveland, since there’s no evidence he played for them.
He came to the Tigers in trade from Clevelands minors system. Leonys Martin i think went the other way?
Another whiffer for the lineup. But he can play SS when Correa goes on DL.
I always liked Willi Castro, I wish him well.
Good for Willi. Showed real flashes of potential on offense and on defense in the OF for Detroit but could never put it all together.
Dude always f***ed the twins. Glad he’s on our team now.
Twins will make him lose his willi for the game.
I saw Willi Castro play SS in the minors when he was 21 or 22. He defined “booting the ball” by kicking a grounder 25 feet with the bases loaded. Cleared ’em all. He is an adventure in the infield, but has a decent arm in right. Now if he could only hit consistently.
He’s only on the team until Polanco comes back. But decent veteran depth piece.
Calling him an “infielder” seems generous. RF might be his best position. I wasn’t happy when the Tigers let him go, but he is a liability in the field and regressed at the plate too much since his rookie year (which his BABIP already suggested back then).
Gruß,
BSHH
Here’s what I see with the Twins which the Castro signing brings out….
Derek Falvey and Thad Levine have been running the Twins FO since the end of the 2016 season. This will be their 7th season.
3-4 years ago I read that their farm system was rich in SS’s – one better then the other. Yet none of those prospects really panned out, so they had to sign Carlos Correa. Then they took what was supposed to be their (latest) future SS – Royce Lewis – and while he was having a good 2022 playing SS when Correa was out injured, they then stuck him in CF with little preparation when Buxton got hurt. This was their top ranked prospect. He suffered a 2nd ACL knee injury running into an OF wall.
What I’m getting at is this – Falvey and Levine have been running a scouting department and farm system for 6 years now. While they may see something in Willi Castro’s talent that wasn’t brought out in Detroit, it would seem that by now they’d have a number of youngsters available in their system that could handle coming off the bench playing some infield and outfield. Willi does play a lot of positions, but none of them very well. Nor has he hit particularly well in 3 of his 4 seasons – only during the 2020 COVID 2020 season did he have an OPS over .651.
This is supposed to be a team in contention in 2023. All teams are going to have players get hurt or have unexpected poor seasons in 2023. True contenders have depth available both on their ML bench and in the high minors. A team and their fans looking foreword to having Joey Gallo all season – AS A STARTER – is something I just don’t get…..and now they signed Willi Castro.
I know their top 3 starters and bullpen guys are good to very good. But the rest of the pitching is questionable as well as a number of the position players.
Well, Harris cut Harold Castro, Willi Castro, Victor Reyes, and non-tendered Candelario. Candy will be the starting 3B for the Nationals, while Harold will provide a bench piece for Colorado, and Willi for the Twins. Only Reyes did not make the White Sox to start the season. Then Harris traded for a platoon 3B in LHH Maton, and a RHH OF in Veirling.
Almost seems like they are running in place.
Unfortunately for the Tigers’ fans, the Tigers discovered, only after it was finished, that they contracted an unqualified contractor to build their house. The new contractor discovered a weak foundation, permanent structures build like temporary structures and inadequate materials and refurbished materials used in reverse. The contractor can’t repair the mess the previous contractor made and has to tear it all down and start all over, block by block. At this stage, the tear-down and prep takes more care than the rebuild.
The only one who is arguably worth a spot out of that group is Candelario. Like you I wish they had resigned him. I’d rather see them play young guys like Kreidler to see what they have than give those at bats to the old group who had lots of warts, even if they were useful in some areas. McKinistry…I’m not so happy with that move. I am however pretty happy with Maton and Vierling. If they and their platoon partners hit the same as an everyday starter then we get the same stats. It worked for SF when they won 107 games.
The Giants won 107 games because they had a historically great yet historically unheralded bull pen and no weak link on their entire well balanced pitching staff. Also, Buster Posey and Carl Crawford had their swan song seasons. Many of what looked like platoon was fortunate replacements for injured players. I doubt it was because of platooning that the Giants had 107 wins.
I think if you look closer they signed a bunch of relatively unheralded SPs too. It was Brandon Crawford, Carl is retired, but him Posey and Belt had seasons they sure were unlikely to repeat. Hence the regression. There was lots of mix and match that year, same as they have done since. More of a perfect storm type season but exploiting matchups played a part in it. All I’m suggesting is the Tigers might benefit from the same logic.