The following Starlin Castro piece is by Tim Baffoe, of CBS Chicago.com. It reflects the opinions of Tim Baffoe.
Enjoy:
I tell teenagers that a great way to have intelligent people not respect your correspondence online is to type all caps or exclamation points in earnest.
This game should be tied! Sit Castro down and send a message Rick Renteria!! #Whatkindofbaseballdouplay
— David Kaplan (@thekapman) August 28, 2014
I'm serious. That garbage can't be tolerated! Anyone who defends Castro on that play is nuts. Send a damn message BS won't be tolerated!
— David Kaplan (@thekapman) August 28, 2014
It’s the equivalent of yelling instead of discussing, something now so a part of the American argumentative fabric that it makes you seem just authoritative/crazy enough to host an afternoon televised sports debate show.
Cubs shortstop Starlin Castro went through the public headshrinking in 2012. Then again in 2013. Now it’s happening again because when the Cubs are amid a Renaissance of scouting, developing, and producing young talent for the big club, when the Great Plan finally is bearing fruit and seems like it actually will be something resembling what Theo Epstein promised, let’s bitch about the mental gaffe of a 24-year-old who has made the All Star Game this season, his third in five years as a Major Leaguer.
By no means should anyone be happy about the error on the bases and in the field that Castro made in Wednesday night’s game in Cincinnati. At the same time it seems like a yearly much ado about nothing and borderline picking on a guy who has pretty much shown you what he is, which happens to be a solid overall baseball player.
Why does this happen every year? Sure, Castro doesn’t help himself by spacing out once in a while, but it is as if some people just can’t wait to dump all over the guy when he screws up. He has become this odd symbol of a bridge between old and new eras and has fans bitter because he isn’t a mega-uber-superstar? His 2013—seemingly an oddity rather than norm for him—put it in people’s heads that he’s a bust, and even with a 2014 rebound some just can’t wait to yell, “SEE SEE TOLD YA.”
@LenKasper If that play where Rizzo doesn't cover 1B happens to Starlin the reaction is 100 times worse. & the error totals close too…
— Matt Clapp (@TheBlogfines) August 28, 2014
Castro’s greatest crime, it seems, is that he’s a completely capable, above average player in a lineup with the potential to be otherwise full of fireworks while never fulfilling the unrealistic savior expectations of a starving fanbase as a product of the Jim Hendry Era of mediocrity. And he’s not all aw-shucksy all-American boy either.
But he is indeed a solid baseball player. Per Fangraphs, for current MLB shortstops he is third in weighted on-base average, weighted runs above average, and weighted runs created-plus—all nerdy stats that measure a player in much more accurate fashion than homers and RBI. Fangraphs also has a nifty formula that calculates what a player is worth on the free agent market. Castro makes $5 million this season. His actual value is $13.9 million for this year and $50.4 million career to date.
Castro’s defense leaves something to be desired, but sabermetrically all things considered, he is a benefit to a team, not a detriment (his -6 defensive runs saved ranks him as below average but not yet poor; -3.3 ultimate zone rating means he isn’t a great fielder, though he is amid his best fielding percentage of his career). He’s creating more runs than he’s costing (23.4 runs above replacement), leading to wins overall and not losses (2.5 wins above replacement, 8th among 2014 MLB shortstops). His walk rate has risen in a year as well.
But after a game—yes, a loss in a season where record is not indicative of progress—in which Javier Baez and Jorge Soler both showed flashes of what fans should expect as this experiment gels, Castro was the topic of postgame chatter. Castro thought he’d homered and ended up with a single because he didn’t sprint out of the box. Had the ball cleared the wall, when Castro rounded third and approached home to do his ritual of making a sign of the cross, he probably would have thought of the loved ones he lost tragically last week and had just returned from the Bereavement List because of.
“I feel bad for him,” manager Rick Renteria said. “He’s got a lot on his mind. He knows he should have been there.
“When a young man tells you he made a mistake, what can you say? He was apologizing to everybody.”
BENCH THE GRIEVING MENTAL CASE HITTING .365 SINCE AUGUST 1. Then everything will be right in Cubdom.
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