Our new Pirates Winter Report will highlight one Pittsburgh Pirates prospect each week, then give brief notes from each country playing winter ball. This week, we feature Diego Castillo, who spent the 2022 season between the Pirates and Triple-A Indianapolis. He’s playing this winter in Venezuela.
Not long after he played his first winter league game in Venezuela this year, Diego Castillo spoke to his local media about his plans for the winter. He said that the Pirates were going to let him play a lot, and they wanted him to use the entire field, both on offense and defense.
The Pirates know that Castillo will have value to them in 2023 and beyond if he can play multiple positions well. They also know his hitting has to improve to make that possible. The 25-year-old posted a -0.8 WAR in his rookie season. He batted .206/.251/.382 in 96 games, which was worth 0.2 WAR in this day and age of power hungry hitters with low averages and high strikeouts. His defense is what dragged him into the negative numbers.
So far this winter season, he has played shortstop, second base and right field, where he has committed three errors in 11 chances. That makes it hard for his winter team to keep letting him play outfield, when they are trying to win a league title.
The Pirates also told Castillo that they want him to try to use the entire field at the plate by improving his approach. Let’s face it, any improvements in his 5% walk rate, 26.5% strikeout rate, and his low average, will help him out in the future. Just because MLB is creating launch angle robots who swing for the fences in every situation, doesn’t mean it works for everyone. Castillo has shown better results in the upper levels of the minors that lead you to believe that there’s the potential for better big league numbers.
While winter ball is a great way to help a player on defense, regardless of where they play, it’s not always good for the offense. If the drop in competition is too much, the experience is borderline useless for a player who was healthy all season. With that in mind, I wanted to see what kind of pitchers he was facing this winter.
Venezuela hasn’t been getting the quality of players recently due to turmoil in their country. They get fewer quality import players than other winter leagues, and even some players from Venezuela don’t go back home to play. That doesn’t mean the competition isn’t good though.
A run through the pitchers in Venezuela right now shows 27 pitchers who have MLB experience. That doesn’t compare well to the Dominican, where that number is twice as high (56), despite the Dominican league having six teams, while Venezuela has eight. However, it’s much better than Mexico, where there are only ten pitchers right now with big league experience in a league with ten teams. You could put Venezuela on par with Puerto Rico, which has 12 pitchers with big league experience for six teams, but it’s still early in their season, so more should arrive. Venezuela isn’t as strong as it has been, but it’s not bad either.
Castillo is seeing competition at least equal to Triple-A, and let’s face it, most of MLB pitching is equal to Triple-A now with all of the players teams use. There were 871 MLB pitchers used in 2022. Math will tell you that equals 29 per team, though team averages are higher due to overlap. With 13-man pitching staffs, you’re seeing entire Triple-A staffs around baseball taking up big league time, and we are even dipping into Double-A staffs for some players at those rates. More than half of the big league pitchers we saw this year didn’t make the Opening Day roster.
Compare those big league numbers to Venezuela, where they not only get MLB players, there are a lot of veteran players who capped at Triple-A in their career, and others who play summer ball in Mexico and winter ball at home. The average age of Venezuelan league pitchers in 28.6 years old, almost exactly the same average for MLB pitchers this year.
Am I saying Castillo is seeing pitchers comparable to MLB games? That would be no. I am saying that he’s seeing MLB quality pitchers at times, especially when you consider that MLB pitching is extremely watered down right now. He’s seeing a lot of pitchers who are just as good as many of the pitchers he saw in the majors this year. That all leads me to believe that there is value gained for him on offense by playing in the league, just like he gained value out of playing with Indianapolis during the regular season.
Around the World
Dominican Republic
The Dominican is still going slow. Oneil Cruz still hasn’t debuted yet, despite being allowed by the Pirates to report on November 1st. He was going through batting practice and fielding drills on the same day 13 days ago, and he played a minor league game (called the Parallel League) more than a week ago. There was a rumor of a salary dispute with his winter team, which may or may not be true. The much needed added experience would have been great for him at shortstop, but the season is about half over now.
Rodolfo Castro is playing regularly and things could be going better, but his .616 OPS and four errors in ten games is clearly a very small sample size. Yohan Ramirez recently debuted and he’s thrown shutout ball in his three appearances.
Venezuela
Besides Diego Castillo, there’s one other player of note in Venezuela. Catcher Ali Sanchez is serving in a bench/defensive replacement role after a few games as a starter, so he’s getting very few at-bats. He had a solid game on Thursday, but not much else to report. The Pirates only have two catchers on their 40-man roster, Sanchez and Endy Rodriguez, who most certainly isn’t an Opening Day option with his limited upper level experience. They will need at least one other catcher for the early part of the season.
Mexico
Fabrico Macias and Jared Oliva are both playing regularly and seeing average results. They are both batting near/at the top of the order, putting up results that don’t really stand out as much, until you see that the league in putting up a .667 OPS this year. Only 12 regulars in the league have an OPS over .800. Oliva is about 60 points above league average, while Macias is slightly below average. It’s odd that I noted how few MLB pitchers were in the league, but Mexico also has a lot of experienced pitchers who only do summer/winter in Mexico. Their average age for pitchers is over 28 years old.
Puerto Rico
The schedule in Puerto Rico started two weeks ago today. So far we have seen Brad Case, Will Kobos, Jeffrey Passantino and Aaron Shackelford, though Shackelford only played on Opening Day. The pitchers are all doing well, combining to allow two runs in 14.1 innings going into Friday night. Case has been dominant. Kobos is racking up strikeouts. Passantino has been efficient and effective.
Nick Gonzales won’t be playing winter ball this off-season as originally planned, but he is being replaced by Tsung-Che Cheng, who was recently named as the best baserunner in the Pirates system and he was named to the Florida State League All-Star team. Cheng will report in December.
Australia
The league in Australia started ten days ago and Sydney is loaded with Pirates prospects. They have Jesus Castillo, Sammy Siani, Ernny Ordonez, Dylan Shockley, Jase Bowen and Solomon Maguire. Bowen and Maguire just started this week, while the others all played four games during the first week of action. It’s still a bit too early for anything to stand out, but we did take a closer look at Castillo last week. Friday’s game saw all six Pirates playing at the same time.
Colombia
The league in Colombia is off to a mixed start for all of the Pirates. Andres Alvarez has started great, though he has a full year of Double-A experience, playing in a league that is no more than Low-A quality at best. Francisco Acuna is playing, which is good because he will still be suspended at the beginning of the 2023 season due to a PED violation. Rodolofo Nolasco is off to a slow start. This level of play is perfect for him to make up for some missed injury time in 2022. Cristian Charle, Oliver Mateo, Adrian Florencio and Diego Chiquillo have all seen brief time so far, while Eddy Yean is also scheduled to play in the league.
United States
The Arizona Fall League has ended, and you can check out our recap of the eight Pirates minor leaguers in competition.
