2006 in Review- Jose Castillo

Now that 2006 is over, I'll be looking at one or two Pirates and their 2006 season each day. I'll look at what we expected, what we got, and what that might mean for the future. I may or may not assign a meaningless grade to their performance. Today: Jose Castillo.

It's time to suck up and get this one over with.

2005 key stats: .268/.307/.416 with 11 homers, 16 2B and 3 3B with 53 RBI and 59 K in 397 PA
2006 PECOTA: .273/.321/.409 with 11 homers, 24 2B, and 3 3B with 56 RBI and 80 K in 509 PA
2006 key stats: .255/.317/.338 with 14 homers, 25 2B, and 0 3B with 65 RBI and 98 K in 550 PA

So, umm, what happened here? After the Brewers game on June 1st, Jose was hitting .311/.359/.500. He had 30 RBIs and had just hit his 8th homer the day before. He had walked 19 times and struck out 28. All of this was in around 200 PAs, about 50 games into the season. Those are some sparkling numbers for any position player, much less a second baseman. From there on out, things were disastrous. He hit .222/.267/.320 (a .587 OPS!). His homer rate was just about halved. Most stunningly (brace yourself, sit down, and get a stiff drink) he struck out 70 times against FIVE WALKS. That's not a typo. He struck out 14 times more than he walked from June on. Of players with 338 ABs or more after June 1st, Jose had the second lowest slugging percentage (interestingly, Jack Wilson had the fourth lowest though, as discussed yesterday, much of that was due to a miserable June) behind only Ronny Cedeno. He also had the second lowest OBP, also behind Cedeno. Thus, we can infer that of all players to play regularly from June 2nd through the end of the year, Jose Castillo had the second lowest OPS. His defense was no better, he was 2 runs below replacement at second this year and a whopping 23 runs below average. Basically, Jose Castillo very well may have been the worst regular player in the major leagues from June 2nd until the end of the season (Cedeno is a much better fielder).

So what to make of this? Consider that after putting up an OPS of .823 in Lynchburg at the age of 21 in 2002, his highest seasonal OPS was the .729 he put up in Altoona the next year. He's going to be 26 next year. That means that, "He's still young," is no longer an excuse, because he really isn't. It means that if we get a decent offer for him at all this offseason we need to press trade before the offering GM finds this post or does any research of his own. I don't see any reason to think that his legendary "potential power" will ever be tapped over a full season. After this last season, we'd be lucky for him to just be average.

Stats from the Baseball Musings Day by Day Database, Yahoo! Sports, The Baseball Cube, the BP Website,and my trusty copy of Baseball Prospectus 2006.