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Right there is what it boils down to fellas.
Right now Castillo is 1-3 with a 6.07 ERA. He's gave up 40 hits 5 HR's in 29.2 innings. Teams are batting .328 against him.
Gray is 0-2 with a 5.93 ERA
If this team is gonna be competitive, have any shot, however you want to put it ? These two have to get healthy, get right, get it together.
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Castillo is pitching like he wants outta here. Doubt he wins more than 5 games this year. And Grey can’t buy run support if his life depended on it, the bats don’t show up on days he pitches. Cardinal Bob the St. Louis Sleeper Cell has done a wonderful job keeping the Reds competitive. Our farm system is so devoid of talent even Jim Bowden couldn’t find a way to ruin it!
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Luis Castillo has always struggled on team's best hitters at the top of the rotation.
Batting 1st: .278/.342/.460 (.803 OPS)
Batting 2nd: .278/.357/.478 (.835 OPS)
That's career numbers vs Castillo. So nothing new there, just a worse case of it than normal. Sure seems most of his problems are mental rather than physical.
Whatever he's doing, it's simply not fooling people. He is allowing contact on 80% of his pitches, up about 10% from his career norm, and his swinging strikes are down about 4%. Maybe tipping pitches? Or just not executing? Don't know.
He's allowing contact on 70.6% of his pitches OUT of the strike zone. That's 20.6% more than his All Star year in 2019. Maybe not enough movement, or I don't know. They're seeing it pretty well.
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I think Gray's problem is he has been throwing more and more balls in the dirt and people are simply just catching onto it. In 2019 when he went to the AS Game for the Reds, he had 7 WP in 175.1 IP. In 2020, he led the NL in WP with 7 in just 56.0 IP.
Now in 2021, he already has an NL leading 7 in just 30.1 IP.
Like a hitter who gets enamored with the long ball and just swings out of their shoes after that, I think Gray got enamored with burying the ball into the dirt to get a swinging strike. Then he gets in trouble by throwing wild pitches into the dirt and he needs a strike to make up for it, which leads to his career high HR/9 rate.
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I think that barring them getting their shit together and being in legit contention at the break, Grey, Castillo and Castellanos will all be sold off in short order.
The rebuild that we endured or 5 years came to fruition for literally one decent year in 2020 and fizzled out. The new narrative will be predicated on waiting for Greene and Lodolo to get to the majors. That may not be a long wait, but it's still a garbage way to run a franchise. Losing and selling for a day that never comes costs a team fan interest over decades.
This entrire offseason was clownish and unserious. They bailed two legit RPs to pay for a shortstop that never materialized. It's a tragedy. This team has a lot of heart and want-to. They guys they shelled out for in 2020 are playing like a team after finding themselves during the bizarro covid season only to be short-armed by small-time ownership and front office.
The people that were alive to see this team at their Big Red Machine peak are fewer and fewer. Hell, anyone under 40 was barely baseball conscious for the 1990 title year. The Reds time as a relevant team fades farther and farther into memory and not much else. if they don't figure things out, there won't be anything left in 20 years outside of fans that only know this team as a doormat. Sad shit, really.
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I think D Johnson may have broken Castillo by tweaking his follow through. Not sure. But make no mistake, Castillo is broken at this point. The choice is stay with the new changes or go back. I think Castillo is determined to stick it out to the angst of Reds fans.