Fantasy Baseball Shortstop Profiles: Starlin Castro

Mandatory Credit: Benny Sieu-USA TODAY Sports

To emphasize how bad of a season it was, he punctuated it by ending with exactly 666 at bats. Interpret that however you would like, but I am sure Castro and fantasy owners want 2013 to be nothing but a bitter memory.

To me, Castro is a guy who lacks a true identity.  Let’s take a look at Castro’s stats from his first 4 seasons:

No league counts caught stealing, so we rarely discuss it. Still, I added it for a reason, although we’re going to get to that in a bit. For now, we’re going to focus on Castro as a whole.

Castro is a guy that brings up mixed feelings.  Athletically this kid has the potential to be something special, or at least has shown flashes of brilliance to lead us to have that sort of conclusion.  However mentally, Castro lacks a bit and has a lot of room for improvement. His struggles have been well documented, not paying attention in the field, forgetting how many outs there are, forgetting how many outs there are, not paying attention to which bag the primary play is at, and just not really understanding game circumstances.

Of course defensive struggles mean little or nothing to most fantasy managers, because well, the majority of leagues do not account for defense. In this case however, it comes into play, because he’s been warned to not make the mistakes anymore, and has later

Which Starlin Castro will we be looking at in 2014?

Photo courtesy of Ben Grey.

been benched for these mistakes. Yes, Dale Sveum has been fired, but I can’t imagine the new manager will be all that forgiving if these same mistakes persist, considering these mistakes are really unforgivable beyond Tee Ball. If he’s benched, he’s losing at-bats, and that does impact fantasy owners.

We can also look at how his lack of focus could in fact be limiting him offensively. Castro has a clear lack of discipline at the plate, some

might sugarcoat it and call him a free swinger, but couldn’t it be possible that his impatience is just him relying on his natural ability rather than disciplining himself?  He wouldn’t be the first, and there are plenty of successful free swinging hitters in baseball to validate just being who you are at the plate.

Now, going back to caught stealing…

This stat is curious to me because a young and athletic ball player like Castro should not be caught that often. So there are a few assumptions we can make over this.

1. He is a well below average on the base paths.
2. He has some sort of tell that teams know when he is going and can effectively pitch out and nail him.
3. Perhaps he has—or assumes he has—the green light to go whenever he wants, and just chooses wrong, a lot.

I firmly believe that his lack of focus comes into play more and more in every aspect of his game.  It was a little cute at first, but over time his fantasy owner’s patience will grow as thin as his big league manager.

To sum it all up:

Starlin is a head case, but he is also only 23 years old. It is hard to not expect that he should act a little more like a seasoned veteran having over 600 Major League games under his belt.

However it is hard to ignore the fact that his physical prime is just on the horizon.  Castro has the raw skills to bat 3rd and do it well, perhaps even flirt with 30/30 if EVERYTHING comes together for him. Unfortunately, he can also BARELY crack the Top-25 overall fantasy shortstops like in 2013. In my opinion, Starlin Castro is one of the biggest fantasy gambles coming into drafts in 2014.

The very frustrating thing with Castro is that you don’t have a couple stats categories you can bank on. He plays for a lousy team, so his Runs and RBI will be reliant on unproven talent around, AND his own stats he was known for — steals and batting average are really beginning to come into question.

I would avoid Starlin Castro until about round 12-15, and would not exceed spending $15 on him in an auction and I would probably hope to nab him around $8.  There is just way too much going on for him to bring it all together and make good on his potential.  If Clave would have done a piece on the stars aligning for Castro, he would have had a 10,000 word galaxy going.