Castillo is Spanish for “single”

Jayson Stark, on his Insider Blog, wrote about Luis Castillo’s low slugging percentage. He’s currently on pace to break his own record, set in 2000, for .330+ hitter.

Of Castillo’s 60 hits this season, 55 of them are singles. Which means he’s on pace for only 17 extra-base hits and just a .371 slugging percentage. And trust us – you don’t see a lot of .371 slugging percentages out there among guys who bat .337. Castillo is a singles machine

Twins looking at options

Joe Christensen points out that Gardy wants another bat. One of the things mentioned was that Garrett Jones is next in line to be called up. If Jason Kubel goes on the DL, then that would happen almost immediately. He also mentioned that idea of bringing in another bat for either the DH role or third base.

“You’d like to have one big bat, another big bat, either in the DH spot, or maybe put him at third base and put Punto in the middle of the infield”

I’m not sure if “Punto in the middle of the infield” means he’s replacing Bartlett or he’s a utility infielder. I think replacing Bartlett would be a mistake, despite Bartlett’s struggles so far.

Thoughts on Morneau

After June 9th last season, Justin Morneau was batting .240 with 13 HR. This year he’s batting .279 with 17 HR. I say that only because I’ve already heard a few grumblings about Morneau having a disappointing year. The big difference for Morneau this year is his lack of success against LHP’s. He’s batting just .215 with 5 homers against lefties while in 2006 he hit .315 with 13 homers.

Run support

A lot has been made of the lack of run support for Silva, but Santana has been almost equally screwed by the Twins lack of bats. The Twins have never scored more than 6 runs in a Johan start and are averaging just 3.76 runs per game. In games he’s lost, it’s only been by an average margin of 2.3 runs per game. In Silva starts the offense has averaged just 3 runs per game but his losses have come with an average margin of 4 runs per game.

For a comparison the Twins have scored an average of 4.6 runs per game and lose by an average of 3.6 runs per game in their losses. My point with all these numbers is that While Silva has pitched in several shutouts, he’s also given up a lot more runs and has not pitched in as many close games as Santana. Santana has pitched in a lot of games where a decent amount of runs scored would’ve won the game.