Justifiably, much of the early criticism of the Minnesota Twins has stemmed from the bottom half of their lineup on a nightly basis. A group of veteran sluggers started their 2024 campaign in an absolute tailspin simultaneously, creating a black hole that has already swallowed multiple wins.
Some of these players were intended to be everyday players on a contending team, or at least full-time for their given positions. This includes Christian Vázquez and 38-year-old Carlos Santana, whose modest $5 million salary was the biggest move that the team reeled in over the offseason. Vázquez and Santana are struggling with the bat but remain entrenched in full-time roles.
Then there’s another class of players whom the Twins thrust into bigger roles than the club anticipated and have failed to live up to that challenge. Namely, Kyle Farmer has been at the center of this offensive black hole so far this season.
Willi Castro is another name that gets grouped with the infielder. But thanks to a solid couple of weeks, have we seen him graduate out of this group of struggling veteran players?
I’m not saying he’s finally becoming a perfect replacement for Carlos Correa. But Castro has been less tremendously bad in recent weeks and more reasonably bad as we would have expected coming into this season.
In his last two weeks of play, the enigmatic 27-year-old has a combined .250/.326/.500 slash line, which is 37% better than the league average in that time in terms of wRC+. That level of production probably isn’t sustainable in the long haul, and it’s a pretty small sample size to get excited over. But his slow start was also a small sample, yet many insist that it’s more representative of the type of player that Castro is, and they bemoan the Twins’ top brass for thinking he could be the starting shortstop for a contending team.
However, it’s a flawed criticism for a few different reasons. First, the Twins didn’t cement Castro as a long-term starting shortstop option. He was probably closer to Plan G than Plan B. Surely, the club anticipated Correa being healthy enough to play nearly every day, with Farmer or Brooks Lee as his replacement in case of a long-term absence.
Still, Lee finds himself on the shelf with a herniated disc in his back, and Farmer finds himself in a deep slump. With that, the Twins picked their poison and finally found a way to curb the symptoms, at least for the time being.
Will Castro continue his current heater? That’s to be determined, but he doesn’t need to keep hitting like this for the team to be successful in Correa’s absence.
We’re starting to see what it looks like for even one of these struggling veterans to hit anywhere near capably, and the team is winning because of it. It’s amazing what having one guy who goes 2-5 with an RBI can do for a team, even if he’s surrounded by a handful of guys going 0-5 with three strikeouts. It may not be a recipe for long-term success, but it provides at least a little sustenance for the time being.
And let’s not hide from the fact that Castro’s recent success still only elevated him to below-average. Even in this period of fortune for the switch-hitting speedster, he’s still showing some troubling tendencies that should be cause for concern. For example, he has gone hitless when reaching two strikes in an at-bat in each of the last 22 times, which occurred over the last couple of weeks. According to Inside Edge, he’s also putting only 19% of his swings in play with runners in scoring position, which is fourth-worst in baseball.
So even with the breath of fresh air that comes from 15 hits in 14 days, there is still much to be desired from Minnesota’s de facto starting shortstop.
But just remember that it felt like just yesterday that Twins fans were begging for mere competence from anyone in the bottom half of their lineup. Now Castro is giving them what they wanted, and he’ll need to sustain it for the next couple of series until Correa returns if the team wants to keep their winning ways trending in the right direction. Then, when Correa returns, Castro can be relegated to a part-time role or moved to another part of the diamond that is continuing to struggle.
