In the wake of yesterday's post in which Jason Grey blasts Jason Castro's bat speed and Stanford's baseball program in general, Zach Levine offers a rebuttal:
“I made a little adjustment in my swing, and it really helped me get real efficient with the fastball,” Castro said.
The change was in his back elbow, which aided his approach to the fastball on the inner half of the plate. “He was much quicker to the ball and is now able to drive the ball to all parts of the field,” assistant general manager for player development Ricky Bennett said in an e-mail.
Castro started out April hitting .226/.388/.245 (one extra base hit in 53 ABs), and then in May, jumped up to .293/.364/.391 (five XBHs in 99 ABs). He's cooled off a little bit, mainly by going 5x29 on a 7-game road trip in the last ten days, but still. Once Sean Berry gets his hooks into him...wait. Crap.
Anyhow, Castro's pitch recognition should help him. According to his MiLB page, when he's ahead in the count (68 ABs), his OPS is 1.075, and in the 63 ABs in which he falls behind, that plummets to a .492 OPS.
We didn't come out here to play tiddlywinks, son.
-Hal Smith
