TORONTO -- Welington Castillo opened the scoring on Monday in Toronto with his first home run of the season, a towering shot to left field off of Blue Jays starter Jaime Garcia, then added another solo shot to center field in the seventh.
Castillo turned on a fastball from Garcia and crushed it 409 feet into the first row of the second deck at Rogers Centre. After the ball left the bat at 108.5 mph, Toronto left fielder Curtis Granderson could only turn and watch. The home run gave the White Sox an early lead, though they would eventually lose, 4-2.
When Garcia was replaced by Seunghwan Oh to start the seventh inning, Castillo was the first batter he faced, but the result was the same.
Oh left a fastball out over the plate and Castillo connected again, giving the White Sox another lead after Josh Donaldson had tied it up in the prior inning. This time, Castillo scraped one over the wall just to the right of where his first home run had cleared.
"Welington had a couple of nice at-bats with a couple of homers to put us ahead," said manager Rick Renteria after the game. "He did a nice job."
The two fastballs that Castillo homered off were measured by Statcast™ at 89.6 and 89.7 mph.
The home runs were Castillo's first with the White Sox after signing a two-year, $15 million contract this past offseason. In his first two games of the season, Castillo went 1-for-9 with a two-run double and three strikeouts.
"In general, I thought it was a badly-played ballgame overall," Renteria added. "Both clubs were just trying to hit what they could and [the Blue Jays] ended up coming out on top today."