Did you Notice Reds’ Luis Castillo Got His Velocity Back?
Heading into 2018, there was a lot of hype surrounding Luis Castillo after his breakout 2017 in which he posted a 3.12 ERA and 144 ERA+ at age 24 and had four plus pitches. The young right-hander reminded some of Carlos Martinez and expectations were high. He stumbled out of the gate and finished the season with just a 4.30 ERA. Taken on the whole, his 2018 season was just above average. Sliced up into pieces, there are promising signs pointing to a successful 2019 season.
Part of what makes Castillo such a fun pitcher is that he sports a fastball that can run up to 100 mph. But he was more often in the 95/96 range to start the year and the results were bad. As the year wore on, things got better.
There’s not a big correlation in the underlying data (R^2 value of .22), but the trend is clear. In fact, if we carried this trend out to 2021 (as we do here sometimes), he would be throwing 106 and have an ERA of -45.00. Math is fun. The point remains: when he throws harder, he has better results. In the 12 games when his fastball was above 96.6 mph, Castillo rocked a 3.40 ERA. Slower than that and his ERA was an ugly 7.31.
But the thing that’s really exciting about Castillo’s added velocity is that it affected each of his pitches. Thanks to the great brooksbaseball.net, we can see how his velocity changed on each pitch over the course of the year.
This is certainly a welcome development. A slider that comes in at 86 miles per hour is certainly harder to hit than one coming in at 83 miles per hour, provided the movement is the same. Did Castillo sacrifice any movement to achieve these new velocities? No not really.
The vertical movement chart looks much the same.
This type of velocity improvement over the course of the year is really uncommon. Pitchers mess with their repertoire, shifting grips, arm angles, and emphasis as the year wears on. Rarely do they simply add velocity across all of their offerings. Here’s a quick rundown of where his
- Fastball +1.8 mph = 40th most mph added
- Changeup: +2.6 mph = 10th most
- Slider: +4.2 mph = 8th most
A year ago Castillo was a trendy pick to blossom into an Ace. This year? He’s a sleeper pick, provided he has that average velocity above 96.5 again.
-Sean Morash
