For the second year in a row, Luis Castillo is among the candidates for the American League Cy Young Award for his outstanding individual performance throughout the MLB regular season. The right-hander is currently completing his first full year in a Seattle Mariners jersey and is the top player in Scott Servais’ rotation with less than a month left in the season.
The 30-year-old Dominican is in his seventh season as a professional in the majors and although he has proven since his debut that he is an invaluable pitcher, he is showing an increase in his level, to the point that he is the Best performance of his career in 2023. In 175.1 work entries which were the product of 29 openings, registered a 3.08 ERA, 1.04 WHIP and 191 strikeouts; Numbers that allow him to be in the top 10 in the league in each of these statistics.
As if that wasn’t enough, Castillo has the sixth-best WAR in the entire major league since 2019 at 18.0; only behind big names like Zack Wheeler, Gerrit Cole, Max Scherzer, Sandy Alcantara and Max Fried.
The star of the Mariners rotation has gone from strength to strength over the course of his professional career and has become a benchmark in the best baseball league in the world. In 2018, his second year in the Major Leagues, he had his least productive period, posting an earned run average of WHIP 4.30 and 1.22 on 169.2 IP. Since then, he has made some changes to his game that have allowed him to improve significantly.
According to an analysis by Mark DeRosa, “The Stone” has made three significant metamorphoses in his throwing mechanics that have helped him make his throws at the plate even more effective. Likewise, he emphasized that the usage of his 4-seam fastball has increased by almost 20% from 2019 to date slider 5%; Facts that he considered to be the key to the clear development in the openings of the Quisqueyan.
