The M’s Find A Closer Upgrade While The Rays Confuse

The Mariners understandably upset their fan base on Wednesday when, while just one game out of the Wild Card race, they traded away Kendall Graveman, and to the Astros no less. While it’s still a debatable move, Seattle general manager Jerry Dipoto has shown a bit more of his hand since; after trading for Tyler Anderson to stabilize the rotation on Wednesday night, he found a better reliever than Graveman in the form of Rays closer Diego Castillo, who was acquired for righty J.T. Chargois and minor league corner infielder Austin Shenton. For Seattle, mystery solved, at least kind of; for the Rays, on the other hand, it’s a curious decision.

In getting Castillo, the Mariners have upgraded their late-inning options for the stretch run. Armed with one of the more deadly two-pitch combinations in the game, he is throwing more strikes than ever and missing more bats than ever, and given that he’s just 27, there’s still upside beyond what we’ve seen. There’s nothing complicated about what Castillo does or the way he does it; he’s a classic let-it-eat bullpen ace who sits 96–98 mph with the heater and has a slider in the upper-80s. In an era obsessed with revolutions per minute, he is the rare anti-spin guy, with below-average RPMs on both offerings, but he has found a way to add some two-plane break to his breaking ball this year. He’s also using his slider more than ever in 2021, with nearly 70% usage. Compare that to just two years ago, when he went after hitters with a nearly 50/50 mix.

While Castillo has greatly reduced his walks, he still certainly has far more control than command. It’s the same approach against every hitter: he elevates his fastball and throws his slider to the one location he can consistently get to, working the lower outer edge to right-handed hitters and back-footing lefties. It’s the kind of thing you can succeed at with quality pitches, and there’s no reason to think that success won’t continue. The Mariners added an elite high-leverage reliever who should be able to rack up saves in the Emerald City for three more years (Castillo is arbitration eligible for the first time this offseason), and they made their big league roster better, both right now and in the future.

The Rays will replace Castillo’s roster spot with the 30-year-old Chargois, who has been one of the best NRI signings of 2021. After many years as an up-and-down reliever in the Twins and Dodgers organizations, Chargois struggled to find consistency while pitching in Japan last season, and all he could get upon his stateside return was a non-guaranteed deal with a spring training look. He didn’t break camp with Seattle, but injuries forced a callup, and he’s been an above-average reliever since, although he’s regressed a bit since a strong May start.

Finding consistent major league success for the first time at the age of 30 has been the end result of a greatly improved slider, as Chargois has added significant horizontal action to his 85–87 mph breaking ball; those sweepers have become the flavor-of-the-month for pitch data types in recent years. The pitch has performed well, and both Seattle and Chargois recognized this, as his usage of the pitch has been pumped up to the 70% range, but while his fastball has above-average velocity, it plays down a bit off of inefficient spin and shape. He’s a solid bullpen piece with a salary that certainly appeals to Tampa, and will remain that in 2022 as well.

As for Shenton, he was seen as a potential first-round pick entering the spring of 2019 after an outstanding showing in the Cape Cod League but got off to a very slow start at Florida International. That came at the worst time, as the beginning of the college season in Florida is when top scouts and executives are going to see such a player during their Spring Training stay. He finished the year strong, though, and was eventually selected in the fifth round.

Shenton always hit as an amateur, and that’s continued into his pro career, where he has a .300/.414/.566 batting line in 67 games this year and reached Double-A two weeks ago. He has an excellent approach at the plate, good feel for the barrel, and average power, but scouts wonder if that will be enough for his other limitations. He’s short, stocky, and a well below-average runner, and while he was a third baseman as an amateur and has played the majority of his games there as a pro, he’s already started seeing significant time at first base, a position that many scouts see as his ultimate destination. He’s a legitimate offensive talent, but the value is limited to the bat, so he’ll need to keep raking all the way up the ladder.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t understand this deal for the Rays. This feels like a solid return for a closer-level arm, but it also feels like Tampa Bay is taking its bullpen backwards for the purpose of avoiding Castillo’s arbitration when it should be shoring up for the postseason. The Rays have a fantastic reputation for building outstanding relief corps on the cheap, and they do an outstanding job of not only identifying interesting relievers, but also finding ways to make them better. I criticize this deal with the profound knowledge that two weeks from now, somebody at FanGraphs will probably be writing about how Shawn Armstrong turned into the most dangerous reliever in baseball or some such. But for now, at least at the big league level, it feels like Seattle got better and the Rays got worse.