Castro's 45 mph pitches? 'They were cutters'

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The novelty factor of a position player taking the mound has long faded. Once a rare and offbeat sighting that afforded a chance for players to have some fun in an otherwise noncompetitive game, it has since become all too commonplace to the point where Major League Baseball restricted its usage with the rule changes implemented last offseason.

With that in mind, the Twins apparently decided to take it a little more seriously this spring.

The most interesting aspect of the late innings of the Twins’ 11-5 loss to the Red Sox at Fenway Park on Thursday came when manager Rocco Baldelli emerged from the dugout to put a position player on the mound -- and in a mild surprise, he gave the ball to Willi Castro and not Nick Gordon, who had been the Twins’ position player of choice last season.

Not that it mattered all too much, but was there a good reason behind that?

“I was highly impressed by his bullpen session in Fort Myers [Fla.],” Baldelli said.

Wait, what?

Castro is a utility position player, not a group that is typically represented at all in bullpen sessions.

“I watched him pitch at least 10 eephus pitches in a row and the catcher’s glove didn’t move,” Baldelli said, doubling down. “And I thought, ‘I’ve never seen someone be able to do that before.’”

Turns out he wasn’t joking. Apparently, the Twins asked both Castro and Gordon to throw a pair of 20-pitch bullpen sessions during Spring Training to… evaluate their ability to lob pitches to the plate?

“I was, like, certainly surprised,” Castro said. “I'd never done that before.”

It seems Castro may have shown enough to become the pick in such situations -- and though it didn’t look like it as he lobbed rainbow over rainbow across home plate to secure a groundout from Kiké Hernández, he had a plan in mind. Those pitches that varied in velocity from 40.6 to 45 mph? Apparently, they were cutters.

“Yeah, I was throwing cutters,” Castro said. “One fastball to surprise. And then the cutter again. That's when Kiké hit the ground ball.”

Can you even call a pitch that slow a cutter?

“Those were cutters,” Castro said.

For what it’s worth, Statcast’s pitch classifier said those were sliders.

“No, those were cutters,” Castro insisted.

So be it -- those were cutters. The Twins will hope not to see those cutters in action too often, considering that will typically mean they’re down big in a game. But considering Castro was the only Twins pitcher in that game not to allow a run, perhaps he was onto something -- and maybe those bullpen sessions in Fort Myers actually proved useful.