The Weirdest Thing That Is Happening To Me Right Now

UPDATE 4:00pm ET: In the less than one hour since this article was published, Castro re-signed with the Colorado Rockies.

Anybody with information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of the Daniel Castro Fan Club (@DanielCastroFan) should contact the FanGraphs tip line.

Perhaps the weirdest thing happening to me and my fellow FanGraphists is the Daniel Castro Fan Club. Presumably, the club consists of one dude, but I’ll give “them” the benefit of the doubt. “They” contact me at least once a week to promote their pro-Castro agenda. And, for lack of a better topic today, they’re getting their wish. Sort of. Today we’ll discuss bad players who become good. Because Daniel Castro is bad.

You’re excused if you know nothing about Castro. He’s a 25-year-old utility fielder. Reports say he’s a good defender. Although he has a decent swinging strike rate and strikeout rate, Castro rarely squares up the baseball. It’s nice to put balls in play, but it’s nicer to put well-hit balls in play. The defensive ability gives him some potential to become a replacement level backup. The lack of bat completely nullifies any chance for regular play or fantasy value. As far as I can tell, he’s still a minor league free agent.

Scouts love stand out tools. When it comes to offense, Castro forgot to visit Home Depot (or, if you prefer, Lowes). He’s not a stolen base threat, doesn’t hit for power, and while his contact skills are above average, they aren’t a match for a Zack Granite or Marco Scutaro. He hits too many ground balls to benefit from the juiced ball. The guys who grow from nobody to somebody generally possess at least some potential for stand out tools. It’s one reason why scouts are enamored with toolsy players.

An important caveat: tools are convenient for constructing narratives. I have a growing sense that 2018 will be characterized by an outright war against narratives – at least here at FanGraphs. What I’ve established to this point is that there’s no tidy narrative in favor of Castro. None of the tropes of the fantasy baseball genre apply. That doesn’t mean he’s doomed to failure. It just means any success he achieves will have been unpredictable.

Unsurprisingly, a perusal of successful major league hitters reveals very few comparables for Castro. Zack Cozart was a defense first prospect with similar contact skills to Castro, but he also hit 17 home runs and stole 30 bases in Triple-A. Chris Taylor was good in the minors, then bad in the majors, then good in the majors. Tim Beckham’s profile bears little resemblance to Castro, and he was a better prospect. Yolmer Sanchez, Freddy Galvis, and Jordy Mercer aren’t great comps either even though there are some familiar elements to their stories.

One guy jumps to fore as a best case scenario for Castro. Through his age 24 season, Marwin Gonzalez was a crappy utility guy with 441 plate appearances and a 60 wRC+ across two campaigns. He posted strikeout and walk rates like Castro, rarely made hard contact, and suffered from too many grounders. When he experienced a career season in 2014 for no discernible reason, it smelled more like a fluke than a deserved success.

The story changed in 2015 when Gonzalez traded contact rate for pull-side power. He buffed his line drive and fly ball rates while posting a then-career-low 44.3 percent ground ball rate. He performed similarly in 2016. As we know 2017, his age 28 season, was the true breakout campaign. Gonzalez reverted to his 2014 contact rate while posting a career best 36.2 percent fly ball rate. Most surprisingly, he suddenly learned how to work a count.

Gonzalez serves as a valuable lesson about growth. He kept tinkering with his approach – a truth we can easily see in his outcomes. And after 1,600 mediocre plate appearances in the majors, the light bulb clicked. Perhaps in 2022, we’ll talking about the *click* for Castro.

Joe Panik, a name I left off the list earlier, isn’t entirely dissimilar from Castro. Panik possesses far superior plate discipline and a lower swinging strike rate. Those are his carrying traits. Castro is unlikely to ever mimic Panik’s contact skills, but the plate discipline is semi-learnable.

It looks like I can construct a narrative after all. At their most successful, Gonzalez and Panik made something like Castro’s offensive profile work by walking at a nine percent rate. They also have mid-30’s fly ball rates. Gonzalez rode a juicy ball to over 20 home runs while Panik is more of a 10 home run guy. If Castro can improve his plate discipline while falling anywhere on the Panik-Gonzalez power spectrum, his defensive utility will make him a valuable major leaguer. At that point, you can even turn to him as a fantasy asset.

Before you walk away feeling all warm and fuzzy about Castro, I should remind you that dozens of players have a similar skill set. Nearly all of them will fail to escape the inexorable gravity of Triple-A. Castro will almost certainly be one of them. Guys like Gonzalez are the exception to the rule, and it’s not often that they’re given the 1,600 plate appearances he needed to evolve from scrub to core asset.

However, in this data-driven game, it feels like more and more players are successfully using information to become better players. We’ll probably see more players like Castro grow into contributing roles – even if it’s not Castro specifically. While I’d like to end with some advice on how to snatch these guys, I think we’re already effectively combing for breakout players. Keep at it.