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Minnesota Twins: How losing Jason Castro will not affect pitching

By Benjamin Chase

MINNEAPOLIS, MN- APRIL 29: Jason Castro #15 of the Minnesota Twins looks on against the Cincinnati Reds on April 29, 2018 at Target Field in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Reds defeated the Twins 8-2. (Photo by Brace Hemmelgarn/Minnesota Twins/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Jason Castro
MINNEAPOLIS, MN- APRIL 29: Jason Castro #15 of the Minnesota Twins looks on against the Cincinnati Reds on April 29, 2018 at Target Field in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Reds defeated the Twins 8-2. (Photo by Brace Hemmelgarn/Minnesota Twins/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Jason Castro /
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Minnesota Twins
MINNEAPOLIS, MN- APRIL 29: Jason Castro #15 of the Minnesota Twins looks on against the Cincinnati Reds on April 29, 2018 at Target Field in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Reds defeated the Twins 8-2. (Photo by Brace Hemmelgarn/Minnesota Twins/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Jason Castro /

The Minnesota Twins announced on Monday that catcher Jason Castro would miss 4-6 weeks after having knee surgery. How will his absence affect the Twins pitching staff?

The Minnesota Twins have seen a season of prolonged streaks. The team opened the season 8-6 and in first place in the AL Central before going on a 2-11 run that had them as low as third in the division and as far back as 7 games behind Cleveland. Luckily for the Minnesota Twins, the Indians have not run away with the division in that time, and the Twins have gone 7-4 over their last 11 games to bring them back with 1.5 games of first place again.

Then, Monday brings the news that starting catcher Jason Castro will miss over a month dealing with knee surgery. On the same day the team saw Ervin Santana face live hitters for the first time this season in his rehab, they lose arguably the most important piece of their pitching staff.

So how exactly can a guy with a .143/.257/.238 slash line along with a negative bWAR and fWAR be the most important guy for the pitching staff?

So far in 2018, the answer is that he isn’t. It’s not the end-all, be-all statistic, but in 15 games, Mitch Garver has seen the pitching staff put up a 3.90 ERA to Castro’s 19 games with a 5.37 ERA. Some will point to hitters having a .325 BABIP on pitchers with Castro behind the plate while Garver has seen pitchers induce a .264 BABIP, but the two are only separated by 30 points of batting average.

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The other end of things is that while Castro has been elite at framing over his career, he’s come back to the pack some as shown by his 17.4 framing runs in 2016 in his last season in Houston to his 3.9 in his first season with Minnesota. He’s put up 1.3 framing runs thus far on the season, showing some bounceback in the metric, but not to the level he once owned.

While Garver is not Castro behind the plate, he brings much more at the plate with his bat, with the chance to hit .250-.270 with solid power from the right side in the Minnesota Twins lefty-heavy lineup. Garver also has the experience of catching many of the young pitchers that will be coming up for the Twins as he’s been in the Minnesota Twins farm system, so working with guys like Fernando Romero, Stephen Gonsalves (once he’s up), and a host of relief arms.

Next: Twins prospect Javier out for 2018

So while losing Jason Castro definitely hurts, the Minnesota Twins could back up Garver with a quality defensive backup and be just fine for the next 6 weeks – and possibly even be better.

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