Falling Starlin

He could be playing (Saturday). I’m not sure yet. I want to see how it plays today, but I wanted to be upfront with him and just let him know it’s not just a day off.

— Joe Maddon

And with those words on Friday, August 7th, the Castro Regime fell in Chicago. Starlin Castro has earned the pine, posting an abysmal .268 on-base, around 50 points worse than the MLB average. Power has been even more of a problem; Castro’s ISO of .068 is sixth worst in MLB among qualifying hitters. It is also the worst of Castro’s professional career. Maybe he contributes with speed? Nope, not since 2012, when Castro stole 25 in 38 tries. He’s had only 23 ineffective attempts since then. His defense, long and loudly criticized, hasn’t been all bad; the metrics differ on him, but add them all up (metaphorically, anyway) and he seems to grade out about average.

Castro is striking out only a bit more this year than he has in his career (16.8% vs. 15.7%), but he’s making weaker contact. His infield fly percentage is at a career high of 12.9%, a full 5% higher than his career average. It was high last year, too, but he made up for it with a line-drive rate of over 22%. The line drives are gone this year, with Castro hitting a career low of 15.8%, which is, like his ISO, sixth worst among qualifiers.

Castro isn’t obviously being pitched differently this year. He’s seeing a few more strikes, but that’s probably an effect of his power outage rather than a cause. It doesn’t seem that pitchers have found some sort of secret recipe to deprive him of hits. Rather, it appears that fastballs are simply overwhelming him. According to his PITCHf/x data, Castro’s done pretty well against most offspeed pitches, but he has a league worst -2.70 runs above average/100 against four-seamers, and he’s 4th worst against two-seamers (-2.74). There are some decent hitters who have struggled with one of those pitches this year, but no one has been as bad as Castro at both.

Castro has been known to travel with a rough crowd, and more recently there’s been some ADD speculation. The Cubs organization is hinting that conditioning is a problem, which would explain the loss of power and his inability to hit the fastball. Perhaps, but Castro is 10th overall in total plate appearances since 2012. Whatever his problems may be, durability hasn’t been one of them.

And it’s worth remembering that Castro plays the most difficult position in what is arguably the most difficult team sport. He’s still only 25 years old, and by the standards of young shortstops, Castro has done quite well so far. He’s 29th in career bWAR (8.1) in the divisional era for shortstops through age 25. There are some great players in the top 50, and some not-great players, but there’s only one real disaster: Bobby Crosby at #40. (Ok, Rafael Ramirez at #39 was pretty bad too.) So Castro could have a Crosby-Ramirez future, in which he rapidly descends into mediocrity and irrelevance. But the vast majority of players with achievements similar to his at age 25 did not.

This suggests that either patience or a change of scenery could help Castro, as Grant Brisbee suggested in refuting the ADD speculation in the post linked above. Patience would not, however, seem to be the right move for the Cubs at the moment. Theo Epstein correctly eschewed the splashy megamove at the trade deadline: the wildcard game isn’t worth surrendering prospects. But it makes sense to to take less costly steps to improve this roster for the stretch run, and Castro is easily the biggest hole on the 25-man roster, with arguable exception of the 5th starter slot, now filled (for the moment, at least) by Dan Haren. The Cubs have been more than patient with Castro, and the performance hasn’t been there. Maybe they can give him more at-bats if they fall out of contention, but right now the team’s immediate future matters more than Castro’s.

That said, maybe the Cubs could spend a few minutes rethinking their approach to Castro. He’s has had three different managers in the last three years, each using a different approach with him. Dale Sveum’s tough love didn’t work, and Maddon’s zany zen isn’t working either. It was Rick Renteria’s more personal approach that seemed to get the most out of Castro. The karmic wheel spins in unpredictable ways, and Castro’s collapse may simply be the earthly price the Cubs are paying for Renteria’s defenestration, but it also suggests Castro can be reached, because someone was able to do it. Maddon is intelligent enough to realize this, and flexible enough to recognize that the shtick that works for most players doesn’t work for all. If Castro’s benching is coupled with some creative efforts to get him re-engaged, the Cubs may still be able to get value out of the player.

Diets, workouts, Ritalin, and perceptive coaching will be for naught if Castro is in fact the second coming of Rafael Ramirez. At some point his relatively reasonable contract will begin to look like an albatross, and the Cubs will cut him loose or trade him for minimal return. It would be helpful if players came equipped with little red crystals in their palms that glowed when the player reached his ceiling, but that won’t happen until at least the next renegotiation of the CBA.  So yes, it is possible that Castro has plateaued, and neither he nor the Cubs have figured that out yet.

But the Cubs have a little time. They can jury-rig their infield until they’re ready to press Javier Baez (or even Arismendy Alcantara) into service. They can see how the rest of the season develops, and how Castro progresses as they attempt to rebuild him in place, much like they’re doing with Wrigley Field.  As many have observed, his trade value can’t get much lower, so it doesn’t hurt the Cubs to take a little more time to see what they have. Burning a valuable roster spot on an unproductive player is dangerous, but the biggie-sized September roster is nigh.

If I had to bet, I’d bet that Castro will be moved in the offseason in exchange for someone else’s disappointment (Jed Gyorko, anyone?). But it’s not impossible that, in the top of the 12th inning of Game 7 of the 2015 World Series, Castro comes in from the end of the bench to hit the game-winning homer.  On what started as a day off.