Adrian Del Castillo has made hitting a baseball look easy this season with the Reno Aces, leading the league in hits, doubles, and ranking sixth in runs scored.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Switching between the roles of designated hitter and starting catcher, Del Castillo has posted a .333 batting average, hit 14 home runs, and driven in 47 runs. The 24-year-old, a University of Miami alum, had an impressive 14-hit stretch over six games at the beginning of May, collecting at least two hits in each game. About a week later, he had another similar stretch, this time achieving 15 hits in seven games, once again averaging more than two hits per game for a week.
This resulted in him being named the Diamondbacks’ Minor League Player of the Month in May.
Taking the phrase “light tower power” literally here. Adrian Del Castillo has 14 hard-hit balls out of 18 balls in play and 10 of them hit over 100 MPH. pic.twitter.com/TuuoSEza9t
— Michael McDermott (@MichaelMcDMLB) April 12, 2024
Although Del Castillo is currently ranked as the Diamondbacks’ No. 27 prospect on MLB Pipeline’s list, he has made a strong case for joining the D-backs and making his major league debut this season.
In a recent article by Jonathan Mayo, Jim Callis, and Sam Dykstra at MLB.com, Del Castillo is highlighted as the most likely candidate within the Diamondbacks’ minor league system to be called up during the second half of the 2024 season.
They stated, “With Triple-A Reno for a second straight season, Del Castillo hasn’t cooled off at any point in 2024 and enters Wednesday with a .335/.399/.630 line and 14 homers through 64 games. While some of that impressive slugging can be chalked up to Reno’s hitting environs, the backstop has the data to back it up with exit velocities and in-zone contact rates above the Triple-A average. If anything happens to Gabriel Moreno or Tucker Barnhart in the bigs, Del Castillo should be Arizona’s first call.”
Supporting this argument is the fact that the Diamondbacks have largely reduced Tucker Barnhart’s playing time. Barnhart, currently Arizona’s backup catcher behind Gabriel Moreno, has seen his season batting average drop to .164 and has played only four games in June. He finally broke a 0-30 slump at the plate on June 14th when he went 2-4 against the Chicago White Sox.
Given these struggles, it seems like a no-brainer for the Diamondbacks to take a chance on Adrian Del Castillo, who has been hitting the cover off the ball all season and shows no signs of slowing down.
Del Castillo was originally drafted in the second round of the 2021 draft by the D-backs. This year has been his first full season in Triple-A.
