We always root for a debut
Blas Castano is the rare entrant in this year’s 40 in 40 series for whom you might need an introduction, so let’s start with some basic biography. Castano originally signed with the Yankees out of the Espaillat province of the Dominican Republic. Espaillat only has about 300,000 people, but of the four other baseball players from there I could find, three are current or former Mariners: Carlos Vargas, Yimi Garcia, and Freddy Peralta, so that’s a fun fact. Or at least it’s fun-fact adjacent.
Castano wasn’t a splashy J2 announcement with a million-dollar bonus, only securing a contract late in the 2017 international signing period. But he worked his way up in the Yankees’ farm system over the following five seasons before eventually getting cut mid-season in 2023, when Seattle scooped him up as a minor-league free agent. The Yankees had tried making him a reliever before resorting to cutting him, but he didn’t see improved results, so Seattle transitioned him back to starting after they signed him.
With four pitches, he definitely can start. The primary weapon is a 93ish mph sinker, but whether his best secondary is his slider, cutter, or change up depends on who you ask. What all those pitches do is induce a pretty sexy ground ball rate, if you’re the kind of person who thinks ground ball rates can be sexy. (We take all kinds here at Lookout Landing.) What they do not do is induce a ton of whiffs, but he has enough command to keep his strikeout percentage in the low 20s and his walk percentage in the mid-single digits. He’s shown a lot of consistency in those numbers without ever really popping.
At this point, he’s probably not higher than eighth on the depth chart after the core five, Emerson Hancock, and Logan Evans. So one imagines his call-up comes as either a swingman when the bullpen is overworked or else as an emergency starter, particularly if Hancock is already in the rotation and the team doesn’t want to give Logan Evans a hard landing. Maybe that start would go to Jhonathan Díaz, but why not let Castano make his debut?
Projections
FanGraphs Depth Charts: 34.0 IP, 0.0 fWAR, 4.30/4.54 ERA/FIP
PECOTA: 10.0 IP, -0.1 fWAR, 5.01/4.80 ERA/FIP
Over/Unders
Zach: Over
Castano has succeeded at every stop in his career. He’s never stood out, which has stopped him from becoming a capital P prospect, and his fastball isn’t big enough to dream on. But 93-94 works fine. This is the profile of a lot of guys who end up throwing 500 competent big-league innings with few jersey sales. Maybe most of those end up being for Colorado, but I bet he gets a chance with Seattle this year. With a little Mariners Pitching Factory magic, I bet he at least puts up positive value this year, which is more than the projections have him for.
Kate: Under
Y’all. Have you seen how short this particular short king is? One Blas Castano makes up each of Rowdy Tellez’s lower legs, Colossus of Rhodes-style. I want to believe, but I’m just not sure how “Altuve, but pitcher” plays at the big league level.
John: Under
I don’t see it. I think ZAM’s reflection here is reasonable and far from overly rosy. But Castano is defined by what he is not more than what he is, and that’s a challenging path to impact. He is not a bat-misser in a serious way, with nearly identical strikeout rates to his southpaw teammate Jhonathan Díaz, and only a slightly better ability to avoid walks. Grounders are great, they really are, and they cure a lot of ills. But I don’t see a Castano as currently constructed putting together the type of needed impact to get more than an emergency 3-4 innings here or there.