Going Deep

Heading into this past offseason, and then again ahead of Spring Training, the major concern about the Red Sox roster was the starting rotation. With Spring Training nearly complete that concern remains, and it could be argued is even more prominent than it previously was. The starters need to be better, as most of the blame for the 2015 disaster season falls at their feet. As new staff leader David Price aptly put it to Dan Shaughnessy of The Boston Globe, “The Red Sox scored the fifth-most runs in baseball last year. To score that many runs and to be in last place, that’s kind of shocking.” Right you are, Mr. Price. I looked into this comment and found that since 1995 only 20 teams (including the 2015 Red Sox) have finished in the top four in their league in runs scored and finished in fourth or fifth place in their division. Half of those 20 teams are versions of the Rockies, who play their home games on the moon. This is not good company to keep. Ian Browne of MLB.com writes about the obvious decision for Price to get the ball on Opening Day, but after Price, the roller coaster that is the rest of the starting rotation gets put in motion. Rick Porcello just finished the worst Spring Training of any Red Sox pitcher since 2012. Pitching coach Carl Willis told Jason Mastrodonato of the BostonHerald.com that Porcello just needs to relax a little bit, which sounds like a hand-wavy admission that they don’t know how to fix Porcello’s issues. It’s the “he’s pressing” cliché. Clay Buchholz, Joe Kelly, Eduardo Rodriguez et al. offer additional cause for concern. As a group, Red Sox starters have posted a 4.65 ERA this spring, which is a mark that, if maintained, will have the Red Sox headed for a spot on that high run-scoring, poor division finish list once again.

Earlier this week it was announced that Brock Holt will be the Opening Day left fielder, which, among other things, is possible evidence of a Holt-Rusney Castillo platoon at that position this season; an idea that our Brett Cowett questioned yesterday. Opening Day is just one game and Cleveland has right-hander Corey Kluber on the mound – making Holt the better option from a matchup standpoint – so this does not necessarily mark the end of Rusney Castillo as an everyday player. While there is no doubt that Castillo has struggled offensively, while performing (mostly) well defensively, for me, the issue with putting him in a backup/platoon role is that he won’t get an adequate chance to get better. Rob Bradford reported that Rusney is not headed to the minors, so, for now, he will be part of the major league outfield in some capacity. Perhaps the Red Sox feel they have seen enough to know what he is as a player, and that the best way to get any value out of him is in a platoon. On another team Castillo could serve as a late-game defensive replacement, but with Jackie Bradley Jr., Mookie Betts and Chris Young already on the Red Sox roster that role is not available in Boston. Dave Cameron of FanGraphs suggests that, given the crowded outfield situation and up-and-coming players like Andrew Benintendi, a change of scenery may benefit Castillo. Cameron outlines a few potential trade-partners, but in all cases the Sox will likely need to eat a bunch of the money owed to Castillo, or take on a similarly bad contract.

Quick Hits

Should the starting rotation continue to struggle as they have this spring, they can approach new member of the Red Sox front office, Brian Bannister, for advice. Bannister, who serves as the team’s director of pitching analytics, is working to provide pitching insights from a different perspective. Jen McCaffrey of MassLive reports that Clay Buchholz and Craig Kimbrel are on board with what Bannister has to offer. Hopefully other members of the staff follow suit.

Pablo Sandoval’s time in Boston has gone anything but smoothly and now he is involved in Spring Training trade rumours. Nick Cafardo of The Boston Globe reported that the San Diego Padres were scouting Pablo and suggested the possibility of a James Shields for Sandoval bad-contract swap. However, Rob Bradford of WEEI.com says we should not expect to see Shields in a Red Sox uniform any time soon, as nothing has changed in their assessment of him being a bad fit for Fenway Park. For what it’s worth, I think that if a trade is to happen with the Padres, the Sox should be targeting Tyson Ross, although that will likely require the Red Sox sending more than Pablo to the Padres.

Managing players who have histories of strong performance but are underperforming has got to be very difficult. That was John Farrell’s position in 2015. Tim Britton of the Providence Journal writes that that experience has adjusted Farrell’s managing philosophy for 2016. Rather than relying on players’ track records as much as he has in the past, this year he intends on going with the guys who are playing the best, assembling the lineup that provides the best chance to win on any given day.

Christian Vazquez’s goal of being on the Opening Day roster will not be met, as he will begin the season on the disabled list. His recovery from Tommy John Surgery has gone smoothly, but he is not quite ready for the strenuous demands that come with catching. However, Scott Lauber of ESPN.com writes that if Red Sox pitchers struggle in the early going, the team will activate Vazquez, who is an elite defender and highly respected by many pitchers on staff. This will require a decision regarding the status of Blake Swihart and Ryan Hanigan, or the rarity of carrying three catchers on the 25-man roster.

For the second time in his career, Jackie Bradley Jr. will be the Red Sox’s Opening Day centerfielder. This decision makes sense from a defensive perspective, but questions remain about his offensive game. His 1.053 OPS this spring may assuage some of the concerns surrounding his bat, and, as JBJ tells Rob Bradford of WEEI.com, presents evidence in support of his new, aggressive approach at the plate. Given JBJ’s defensive contribution, if he can manage just 65 percent of that spring OPS he will be a very productive major leaguer.

Over the next six-to-eight months, David Ortiz will complete roughly one million interviews asking him to look back on his career and to elaborate on just what it is that he will do with himself in retirement. Peter Abraham of The Boston Globe did just that in what, at season’s end, might be considered one of the best examples of this genre.

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Now set to enter his third season, Castillo is finally in line for a starting job with the big club. Whether that’s good news for the Red Sox is a fair question to ask, especially with another unknown commodity in Jackie Bradley Jr. also primed to start in the outfield.

The truth is we just don’t know what Castillo will contribute in 2016, but Dave Dombrowski and the team’s front office appear determined to find out.

During his brief spells in the majors, Castillo has shown the ability to impact the game defensively but also left much to be desired at the plate (if this also sounds like a good description of Bradley Jr., you’d be right!). What really stands out is how frequently Castillo hits the ball on the ground, or, said another way, how rarely he drives the ball with any authority in the air.

Over 289 plate appearances in 2015, Castillo hit an underwhelming .253/.288/.359, but the real story is that he hit 63.5% of his balls in play on the ground. That groundball rate would have been the highest in all of baseball if Castillo had enough at-bats to qualify, and it really hampered his production with the bat. The Cuban native hit ground balls at a rate similar to slap hitters like Jean Segura and Ben Revere, and while the Red Sox don’t need Castillo to mirror David Ortiz’s power output, they’ll need better offense from him next summer.

As Castillo’s spray chart from 2015 shows, he hit loads of weak ground balls to the left side of the infield and seldom pulled the ball in the air, which isn’t a great recipe for success:

Indeed, such a batted-ball profile speaks to how infrequently Castillo hit the ball hard this past season, and there’s no denying his quality of contact will have to improve moving forward.

Judging by how pitchers approached Castillo last year, it’s pretty clear the book was out on him across the league. Castillo saw hard pitches –four-seamers, sinkers and cutters—nearly 65% of the time, according to Brooks Baseball. As this zone chart shows, opposing hurlers often attacked him inside with their fastballs and challenged him to drive the ball, which he never proved capable of doing on a consistent basis:

If pitchers couldn’t coax a weak groundball out of Castillo with this approach, then they bombarded him with junk away, throwing offspeed and breaking pitches over 50% of the time when ahead in the count against the outfielder, per Brooks Baseball.

This zone chart, of all the offspeed offerings he saw in 2015, paints a clear picture of where opponents took advantage of Castillo. After forcing him to cope with fastballs inside, they regularly changed speeds and location on him later in the count.

If pitchers couldn’t get Castillo to swing and miss at their breaking-ball and offspeed pitches, they could at least count on him to ground out meekly on offerings away and off the plate. For a hitter who rarely provided a threat to drive the ball into the outfield, getting Castillo out became an easy proposition. The disparity in how someone like Mookie Betts performs against inside fastballs and how Castillo struggled with them last season is eye-opening.

This reality doesn’t necessarily doom Castillo, but he’ll have to make some adjustments if he’s going to contribute enough offensively to earn an everyday job. The longer he proves incapable of pulling the ball with authority in the air, the more pitchers will continue to pound him inside with heat and then counter with offspeed stuff away.

What will truly be crucial for Castillo in 2016 is his health. Injuries have kept him off the field far too often the past two years and prevented him from getting enough reps against big league pitching. Many of his struggles could be attributed to this lack of experience, though he must begin to adjust to the strategy of his opposition.

Although Castillo has yet to deliver on that seven-year, $72.5 million contract, you can understand some of the reasons why the Red Sox felt comfortable giving him that deal. His defense has been great when he’s played, and he can handle all three outfield positions. He has plenty of speed, even if that hasn’t translated into stolen bases in the majors. And with his build, it’s easy to see why they projected Castillo would provide at least a little thump with the bat. He has, in fact, shown some power when he’s driven the ball these past couple years.

The problem is those occasions have been few and far between. The challenge for the Red Sox will be getting Castillo to more frequently hit the ball in the air so he can tap into any dormant power more often. With the way pitchers exploited his swing last season, the jury is still out as to whether Castillo will ever be able to do so consistently against MLB competition.

Photo by Winslow Towson/USA Today Sports Images

Despite his age of 28, Rusney Castillo should still be considered a member of the group of prospect-type Red Sox players for whom much uncertainty remains. The seven-year, $72.5 million contract he signed prior to the 2014 season inevitably led to high expectations, but Castillo is not likely to fill a role as a star, so those expectations need tempering. Rather the hope should be that Castillo will slot in as an everyday, above-average defender in the outfield and do enough with the bat to keep the bottom-third of the lineup moving. He is among the group of young outfielders, along with Jackie Bradley Jr. and Mookie Betts, who are expected to make another progression at the major league level this season; at the very least providing defense that could dramatically improve the run prevention side of Red Sox baseball. Castillo has a spot in the Opening Day lineup, but needs to show he can stay on the field and perform, or he will find himself with a permanent bench role while players like Chris Young or Brock Holt assume his starting job.

In two stints with the Red Sox in 2015 Castillo experienced the ups and downs typical of a player adapting to the rigors that come with life in the big leagues. He began the year at Pawtucket but was called to Boston at the end of May. This first run with the big league squad lasted only a month, as he was miserable at the plate, posting a .230/.260/.284 line (43 wRC+) in 77 plate appearances (PA). He struggled to command the strike zone, walking only three times and striking out 15 times – a ratio that is difficult to justify when paired with the absence of power Rusney showed during this stint (one double, one home run).

His next opportunity in the big leagues came after the Red Sox traded Shane Victorino to the Angels at the end of July, which created an opening for Rusney in the previously crowded Red Sox outfield. This second stint involved two oddly disparate months. In the first, Castillo met some of those high expectations that came with his contract. He played solid defense – other than that embarrassing in-game lapse —  – and showed real ability with the bat in his 102 trips to the plate, hitting .333/.366/.531 (142 wRC+). He still had an ugly walk to strikeout ratio (5:22), but his line included four home runs, two triples, and three doubles, so the poor plate discipline was playable. Then, from September 1 through the end of the season. Rusney’s performance cratered. He managed only a .194/.236/.252 line and a 27 wRC+ in 110 PA,) appearing to have reached a physical limit in dealing with the long season. It was a rough finish to a generally inconsistent season.

What Went Right in 2015

As I mentioned in my recap of Matt Barnes’ season, the value of gaining experience is often overlooked. But for players like Rusney Castillo, who is still adapting to life in the United States and learning first-hand the conditioning required to sustain performance across a big league season, it is imperative. Gaining close to 300 PA against major league-quality pitching, playing the outfield in multiple major league parks, and developing a better understanding of how (and when) to deploy his remarkable athletic ability on the basepaths should all benefit Castillo in 2016.   

Beyond experience, the best thing about Castillo’s 2015 season was undoubtedly his defense. While he struggled to a below-average performance at the plate (72 wRC+, .213 TAv), Castillo provided above-average defense in right field. According to FanGraphs’ UZR/150, among fielders with at least 350 innings at any position, his work in right field made him the eighth-best defender in baseball in 2015. Changing up the conditions a little bit to look only at outfielders with at least 600 innings (combined across left, center or right field), reveals that Rusney was the fifth-best outfielder in the game in 2015. For reference, Castillo’s 19.2 UZR/150 trailed his defensive-standout teammate Bradley Jr. (third best) by only three runs. To be clear, Rusney rated as above-average in the corners, where he spent the majority of his innings, but below-average in center. The sample of innings in center is far too small to make any bold statements, but the good news is that with Bradley Jr. and Betts on the roster, Castillo will be primarily called upon to play a corner spot in 2016. 

Rusney can run down flies and has an arm that should keep baserunners in check:

What Went Wrong in 2015

As I have noted, Castillo’s major issue last year was on offense, specifically struggling to control the strike zone. His .288 on-base percentage, over 30 points lower than league average, really jumps out as an area of concern. Earning bases on balls was not really in Rusney’s repertoire last year. Among the 311 hitters with at least 250 PA in 2015, Castillo’s walk-to-strikeout ratio of 0.24 ranked 48th-worst. There are only a few players at that end of the scale who performed at an above-average level on offense. Rusney’s inability to draw walks stems from his propensity to swing and miss. He took a hack at over half of the pitches he saw last year, which was well above the typical rate, but he made contact at a rate that was below average. That is an awkward combination to try and succeed with.

One thing that has interested me for a while is what how a pitcher attacks a hitter tells us about what the pitchers (and perhaps the league in general) think about the hitter. Rob Arthur of FiveThirtyEight (previously of Baseball Prospectus) introduced this idea. Ben Lindbergh (also previously of Baseball Prospectus) also wrote an article outlining this type of analysis. You can and should read their work, but the basic idea is that if pitchers attack a batter with a lot of pitches in the strike zone, and specifically close to the center of the zone, it suggests the pitchers think the batter is an easy out. Conversely, throwing away from the center of the zone suggests they are concerned with the batter’s ability to do damage.

Well, pitchers did not shy away from throwing pitches in the strike zone to Rusney last year. By PITCHf/x data, close to half (49.3%) of the pitches thrown to Rusney were in the strike zone, which was considerably higher than the typical rate for non-pitcher batters in 2015 (47.6). So it would seem that pitchers are telling us they felt Rusney was not all that much of a threat. Looking at his zone profile confirms pitchers were willing to attack Rusney within the zone, even frequently middle-middle, but they also exploited his free-swinging tendency with breaking pitches low-and-away. A more granular look at these data would provide more insight, but it does not look like pitchers were too worried about Castillo. He will need to improve his plate discipline if he is going to be a productive major leaguer beyond the defensive side of the game.

Finally, baserunning. It would be nice if in those few times when Rusney manages to get on-base he can also manage  not to run into an out. He was caught stealing in five of his nine attempts last year, which tied him for the second-worst success rate among hitters with 250 PA and nine attempts. The fact that Castillo and 33-year-old catcher Russell Martin attempted to steal the same number of times and were equally successful last year is not something I ever expected to write. Improving his decision-making on the bases should be another area of focus for Rusney heading into the 2016 season.

Outlook for 2016

His performance in 2015 makes projecting Castillo’s 2016 difficult, but he did play excellent defense and had stretches where he was more than capable at the plate. Sounds similar to Jackie Bradley Jr., no? Castillo’s durability remains a concern, but that is part of his ongoing adaptation to major league life and with Young and Holt on the roster, John Farrell can get Rusney the rest he needs to ensure he performs well throughout the year. When all is said and done, Castillo is most likely going to be a strong-glove, weak-bat, one- to two-win everyday player that will help the Red Sox compete for top spot in the division. If he and Bradley Jr. continue their defensive prowess but boost their offensive output even just a little bit this team could be really frightening. That may be asking a lot, but Castillo’s evolution will certainly be interesting to watch.

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