Player Data: Age: 26 (12/24/1994), B/T: R/R
Primary Stats: 69 G, 70.1 IP, 3-4, 3.45 ERA, 1.294 WHIP, 77 K, 1.79 SO/BB
Advanced Stats: 0.6 bWAR, 0.1 fWAR, 116 ERA+, 4.21 xERA, 4.36 FIP, xFIP 4.48, 25.4 K%, 14.2 BB%
2021 salary: $509,500
Grade: B-
2021 Review
In his first full season as a Met, Miguel Castro showed flashes of the electricity he can bring when he’s on the mound, but also has his fair share of rough patches. The Mets acquired Castro in the 2020 season in a deal with the Orioles looking to boost their middle-inning relief options but didn’t get to see a whole lot out of him before season’s end. The team was mostly hoping to see Castro reduce his walks numbers and increase his strikeouts as that had been his biggest area of concern, and early on it appeared the the right hander had greatly fixed the issue.
April was easily the best month of the season for Castro who pitched to the tune of a 1.64 ERA and generally looked dominating, only allowing two runs in ten appearances. The previously mentioned strikeout to walk ratio that the team wanted to see improved was a great 3.4 as Castro tallied a solid sixteen K’s and five walks for the month.
The following month was solid for Castro as he appeared in 12 games while allowing five runs, walking eight and striking out sixteen. While he didn’t look quite as dominant as he did the prior month, things still appeared to going well for Castro who still had double the amount of K’s as walks. During May, he also had one of his best performances of the year on May 25 against the Rockies pitching two complete innings, allowing no hits and striking out four while also getting credited for the win.
June was the start of a concerning trend for Miguel as the walks bug crept back up. In the month, Castro only struck out six while walking ten, as well as seeing less whiffs as he did the prior two months. (This lined up both with MLB’s crackdown on sticky stuff this season as well as a neck issue for Castro that lingered over the month.) It still was a relatively solid month for Miguel in which he did his job well more often than not but saw his ERA for the month at a disappointing 4.09 while being at a 3.12 for the season. July wouldn’t prove much better as ironically Castro would again have a 4.09 ERA and saw his season ERA hit it’s worst point at a 3.79 before a solid end to the month saw him recover.
August saw the momentum from the end of July continue as Castro appeared in twelve innings and had nearly double the amount of strikeouts as he did walks (fifteen K’s to eight walks) and had an ERA of 3.00 for the month. This wouldn’t carry on to September though as Miguel had his worst month of the season pitching to a 4.63 ERA in what turned out to be one of the worst months for the team overall. Miguel would pitch once in October throwing a scoreless inning and allowing no hits in one inning pitched.
2022 Outlook
All in all, it was very solid season for Castro who did his job of giving the team quality innings and a level of reliability which was severely needed in years prior.
Looking towards the future, Castro is arbitration eligible for the third and final time and is projected to get a salary of $2.6 million. He’ll almost certainly be tendered a contract. Miguel was very valuable to the team this season and although not perfect still filled his role in extremely well. I’d expect him to serve a similar role next season, and with a full season under his belt in Queens to continue performing at an above-average level.
