Miguel Castro, Roberto Osuna and the A-Ball Jump

The Toronto Blue Jays suffered a crippling blow when 23-year-old Marcus Stroman ruptured his ACL during fielding drills last week. Prior to Stroman’s injury, Toronto’s final rotation spot was slated to go to the winner of a competition featuring Daniel Norris, Aaron Sanchez and Marco Estrada. Presumably, at least one of the losers would help fill out the Jays’ bullpen. But sans Stroman, Toronto now needs to use two-thirds of that trio in its rotation, which only weakens a bullpen that was already looking pretty thin. The Blue Jays are scrambling to fill the void.

As it stands, the Toronto only has three bullpen arms that project to be better than replacement-level: Brett Cecil, Aaron Loup and Todd Redmond. After that trio, Steve Delabar, Chad Jenkins and Wilton Lopez are probably the creme of the crop. That’s about as unexciting as it gets. However, there are some wildcards in the bullpen mix. There are rumblings that a couple of 20-year-olds — Miguel Castro and Roberto Osuna — have a realistic shot of breaking camp with the Blue Jays.

KATOH has differing opinions on these two. It forecasts Castro for just 2.6 WAR through age-28, but pegs Osuna for a whopping 13.8 based on his 23 innings of work from last season. Castro’s projection seems logical. He spent most of 2014 in Short-Season A-Ball, where he pitched well, but not amazingly well. Coming from a 19-year-old, a 3.48 FIP in the Northwest League this is far from special. The rosy forecast for Osuna is a little surprising given his unspectacular 2014 campaign, but KATOH really likes that he racked up a ton of strikeouts (30% K%) while pitching as a 19-year-old in High-A.

Regardless of what KATOH says, breaking camp with either of these youngsters would be a bold move for the Blue Jays, to say the least. Not only has neither thrown a single pitch above A-Ball, but they also haven’t been particularly dominant in the low minors. Last season, Castro and Osuna had FIPs 3.80 and 4.05 respectively. These kids are about as raw as they come.

Unsurprisingly, Steamer isn’t too bullish on either hurler for 2015. Castro is projected for a 5.36 ERA, while Osuna comes away with a 4.84. These forecasts could best be described as terrible, especially for relievers. Don’t read much into these projections, though. While interesting to look at, projections based on minor league stats aren’t always super reliable, especially when those stats came against hitters in the low minors.

Additionally, it’s doubtful these projections adequately account for the bump these two would get from a move to the bullpen. This is especially true for Castro, whose arsenal (plus-plus fastball and average secondary stuff) would likely play up in relief work. Projections are great, but in situations like this, you can almost ignore them entirely.

Since we can’t really trust the projections, let’s turn to some historical examples of pitchers who made the jump from the low minors to the majors. Since 2007, I found eight examples of pitchers who had no experience above A-Ball, but opened the year in the majors and threw at least 50 innings.  Six of the eight topped out in High-A in their previous season, like Castro and Osuna did last year. The exceptions were Joakim Soria, who pitched exclusively in Low-A, and Mike Leake, who skipped the minor leagues altogether. Here’s a look at how these pitchers fared in their first big league seasons.

Year Pitcher G GS IP ERA FIP SIERA WAR
2013 Jose Fernandez 28 28 173 2.19 2.73 3.15 4.2
2007 Joakim Soria 62  0 69 2.48 2.50 2.78 2.3
2009 Rick Porcello 31 31 171 3.96 4.77 4.48 1.7
2010 Mike Leake 24 22 138 4.23 4.68 4.31 0.8
2007 Brandon Morrow 60 0 63 4.12 4.19 4.80 0.4
2009 Ryan Perry 53 0 62 3.79 4.52 4.23 0.2
2011 Nate Adcock 24 3 60 4.62 4.35 4.14 0.1
2007 Rick VandenHurk 18 17 82 6.83 5.49 4.71 0.1

Despite their lack of experience against polished hitters, nearly all of these pitchers performed well, or at least didn’t embarrass themselves. VandenHurk was easily the worst pitcher of the bunch, and even he managed to be slightly better than replacement level. Of course, this isn’t to say that any and every hard-throwing pitcher in the minors could be a serviceable big league pitcher. There’s a heavy dose of selection bias at play here: These pitchers’ respective teams called them up specifically because they looked like they could get big league hitters out. It’s also worth noting that this list excludes the pitchers who pitched too poorly to reach the 50 inning threshold, like Wei-Chung Wang did with the Brewers last year.

This sample of players is way too small, and way too biased, to give us much insight into how Osuna or Castro would perform in the majors. Nonetheless, it shows it wouldn’t be unprecedented for either of them to successfully transition from A-Ball to the big leagues. I’d like to point out that these findings also apply to Jason Garcia, who the Orioles plucked from the Red Sox in the Rule 5 draft this past winter. Although he’s not with the Blue Jays, he seems like a good bet to crack Baltimore’s bullpen after spending all of 2014 in A-Ball.

Even if Castro and/or Osuna are optioned to the minors before the calendar turns to April, there’s still a very good chance both will be summoned to Toronto before year’s end. The Blue Jays have shown they’re not afraid to rush their prospects to the big leagues if they think the tools are there. Daniel Norris, Aaron Sanchez and Dalton Pompey all ended last season in Toronto after spending all of 2013 in A-Ball. Although their minor league track records suggested their promotions were a bit premature, the Blue Jays clearly felt they were ready, or at least ready enough. Don’t be surprised if the Blue Jays deploy a similar strategy with Castro and Osuna.

Most A-Ball pitchers would get eaten alive by big league hitters. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be pitching in A-Ball. For this reason, it’s a little hard to believe that Castro or Osuna might be ready to help the Blue Jays right now. But the same could have been said about Joakim Soria back 2007, and he immediately emerged as one of the best relievers in the game. Who knows, maybe one of Toronto’s youngsters will really take to pitching in relief, and enjoy a similar transition. Both certainly have the stuff for it. This may not be the most likely scenario, but it certainly wouldn’t be unprecedented.





Chris works in economic development by day, but spends most of his nights thinking about baseball. He writes for Pinstripe Pundits, FanGraphs and The Hardball Times. He's also on the twitter machine: @_chris_mitchell None of the views expressed in his articles reflect those of his daytime employer.

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Thijs
9 years ago

Loving the van den Hurk reference. Used to play with him when I was younger and I still feel he could have been better if he had had a normal development path. He was brought up too soon. I guess that what Marlins baseball does for you.

philllies113
9 years ago
Reply to  Thijs

Is everyone in the Phillies fan base and Philly media other than myself and a few others a Ben Chapman racist?

What other reason could there be for the total blackout of Yoan Moncada here?

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@johnmiddleton

He’s on Twitter.

This thief and son of a thief called boycotters “disloyal” and had the audacity to tell us over his Twitter account that the Phillies five year run was equal to the Braves 13 year division dominance and we are being ungrateful for what we have been given.

This is your idea of “hope”?

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JOHN MIDDLETON is a LOOTER.

Highlight and Google: John Powers Middleton Felony Fraud

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