Tale of two aces: Castillo out-executes Manoah, making the difference in Game 1

TORONTO — As far as Whit Merrifield's concerned, Luis Castillo’s fastball velocity wasn’t the problem.

These days, big-league hitters face upper-90’s stuff like Castillo's all the time. Merrifield himself saw 308 pitches at 95-m.p.h. or harder this season and hit .263 against them with a .321 wOBA.

The Blue Jays as a team faced over 4,700 pitches thrown 95-plus m.p.h. in 2022, an MLB-leading 20.2 per cent of all pitches they were thrown. Collectively, the club hit .260 with a .324 wOBA against that premium velocity. Merrifield, the Blue Jays — they can hit hard stuff.

No, the problem was the fact Castillo was featuring that velocity on multiple fastballs. As in a four-seamer he was dotting away from right-handed hitters and a two-seamer he was driving in on their hands. That’s what made him near impossible to square up Friday at Rogers Centre, as he spun a 7.1-inning shutout and almost singlehandedly won his Seattle Mariners the opener of this weekend’s wild card series with the Toronto Blue Jays. He put hitters in an impossible position from the jump.

“The velocity is what it is,” Merrifield said. “But he has a sinker pounding out your hands at 99 to 100, and then he has the four-seam that he'll throw up and away. It doesn't have that dive. It's got more of a true carry. You're having to make a decision on what that 100-mile-per-hour pitch is going to do.”

Castillo’s command of those two pitches Friday proved a stark contrast to the starter on the other side who throws a pair of fastballs himself — Alek Manoah. At what was an extremely inopportune time for one of his least effective outings of the season, Manoah struggled to locate either of his fastballs early, missing up-and-away arm-side with four-seamers, leaving two-seamers up over the plate, and getting tagged for four runs, tying a season-high.

“I grinded as much as I can. But today wasn't good enough,” Manoah said. “You have to go out there and execute pitches. Obviously, I didn't do that today.”

Manoah certainly didn’t suffer for a lack of stuff. His slider was snapping off with two inches more vertical break than it typically does, and the hardest a Seattle hitter was able to put it in play was 88-m.p.h. The pitch was so good that Manoah rode it through his second and third innings, using it for 17 of the 28 pitches he threw in those frames. Ultimately, it was Manoah’s most-thrown pitch of the night and earned him 9 of his 11 swinging strikes.

The trouble was contained almost entirely to a shaky, 26-pitch first inning in which fastballs were either flying away from him arm-side or grooving in right over the heart of the plate:

The Mariners took full advantage of Manoah’s inconsistency, as leadoff hitter Julio Rodriguez took one of those sprayed fastballs off the hand to reach first base, before scoring when Eugenio Suarez shot one of the heaters that landed middle-middle into the right field corner to cash him.

Cal Raleigh was next. And while the Mariners catcher strikes out nearly 30 per cent of the time and doesn’t hit his weight, the switch-hitter’s built a solid, 121-wRC+ season by punishing mistakes from right-handed pitchers, hitting 24 of his 27 homers on the season against that side of the platoon. And this right here is a punishable mistake from a right-handed pitcher:

Manoah’s catcher, Alejandro Kirk, may have set up middle-middle to deke the runner on second, but the fact he quickly moved off centre to the inside part of the plate is a pretty obvious tell as to where that pitch was intended to be located. But Manoah missed up and over to a guy whose game is predicated on making pitchers pay for slight missteps like that.

“It was a pretty lengthy at-bat with Cal and ended up not executing the front hip sinker,” Manoah said. “They beat me on my mistakes. And I felt like I was able to start executing after that.”

Manoah didn’t exactly cruise his way out of that first inning. He fell behind his next batter, 3-0. But he eventually got the two outs he needed and, after putting the No. 8 and 9 hitters on with a single and a walk in the second, went on to retire nine straight.

That perfect second trip through Seattle’s order was as good as Manoah looked all night. He pitched just like the tricky, attacking-the-edges game manager he’s been all year, working to a 2.24 ERA in a season that ought to receive AL Cy Young consideration. But things came undone in the fifth, as Manoah began spraying his fastball again, hitting Rodriguez with another one before letting the Mariners scratch across a fourth run with a single and a groundball.

Manoah’s night ended with two out in the sixth, as Blue Jays manager John Schneider made the proactive choice to lift him a batter too early rather than a batter too late and force the lefty-heavy bottom of the Mariners lineup to face Tim Mayza. At only 79 pitches, Manoah certainly could have kept going. And if it was June, he likely would.

But it’s October. And while pitching into the sixth inning while allowing four runs doesn’t always submarine a team in summer, it can in fall when the standard of pitching is higher and offence is at a premium. And it really can when Castillo’s throwing some of his best stuff of the season for the other side.

Castillo started Friday’s outing sitting 100-m.p.h. with both his fastballs and only lost a tick off that velocity as his night wore on. He was still hitting 100 in the third, and settled into a groove at a mere 98-99 by the fifth and sixth. Not a bad boost for a guy whose average fastball on the season was 97.

Mix in a slider that was sitting 87-88 — Castillo averaged 86.5-m.p.h. on the pitch in the regular season — plus the odd 90-m.p.h. changeup, and it wasn’t exactly a comfortable night for Blue Jays hitters.

But what made Castillo nastier still was his location. He elevated hitters' eye-levels with carrying four-seamers up-and-away, and blitzed two-seam fastballs up-and-in that made them bend back in the box, before sending them lunging forward after sliders and changeups down-and-away. Castillo’s pitch chart tells a clear story of a pitcher who entered a meaningful, pressure-packed start with a focused gameplan and executed at will:

Combine elite velocity with big movement and precise command to each edge of the zone — Castillo threw only two middle-middle pitches all night — and you need merely competent defenders behind you to utterly dominate a lineup. You can credit Blue Jays hitters for at least making contact with the some of the insanity Castillo was throwing and striking out only twice over the first six innings. Incredibly, Castillo allowed more hits on the night (six) than Manoah did (four).

But nothing about that contact was threatening. Toronto’s best-struck ball against Castillo was George Springer’s 104.4-m.p.h. single in the third and Danny Jansen’s 380-foot flyout to centre in the fifth. Remove those two results from Castillo’s line and you find 20 balls in play at an average exit velocity of 80.6-m.p.h. Weak grounders, innocent flyballs, and the odd flare that found its way to no man’s land. 

“He was able to command the zone. I feel like he was getting ahead a lot,” said Blue Jays third baseman Matt Chapman. “And whenever we got guys on base, he just made good pitches. He was able to get out of it.”

That may have been the most impressive part of Castillo’s outing — the way he raised his level whenever the BABIP Gods tested him. Like in the third, with two on and two out, when he put Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in a lose-lose situation by spotting a 90-m.p.h. changeup at the knees followed by a lively, 98-m.p.h. fastball that ran right up into the Blue Jays’ first baseman’s kitchen:

Or in the fifth, again with two on and two out, when Castillo doubled up on sliders against a dead-red-sitting Bo Bichette, before forcing a groundball with a sinker:

And especially in the seventh, with his pitch count creeping up into the 90’s, when Castillo emptied the tank and started blowing hitters away. He struck out Chapman with five fastballs and a slider; Raimel Tapia with an explosive heater up-and-in; and Jansen at the end of a six-pitch battle with a 98-m.p.h. fastball up and over the plate:

That was Castillo’s 99th pitch of the night and one of his meanest, as he bet the Blue Jays catcher couldn’t predict what would follow a slider-fastball-changeup-slider-changeup sequence, and simply couldn't hit his fastball in a challenge spot, and was proven right.

“He was on his game for sure,” Bichette said. “He pitched really well. He threw strikes with pretty much everything. He threw a lot of good pitches just off the plate. I thought we competed well and had good at-bats. But he just got the best of us.”

Sometimes baseball can be that straightforward. One guy with two fastballs who could make them do anything he wanted. Another with two fastballs who couldn’t find his feel. In MLB’s post-season tournament, which teams with poor pitching staffs have little hope of qualifying for, the margins are that thin. Everyone has good starters. Everyone can throw hard with movement. Often, it comes down to execution. At least Friday it did.