9:31pm: Infielder Edwin Arroyo and pitchers Andrew Moore and Levi Stoudt are also headed to Cincinnati, Divish reports (on Twitter).
9:26pm: Seattle is likely to send four prospects back to Cincinnati, including top shortstop prospect Noelvi Marte, reports Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times (on Twitter).
9:23pm: The Mariners are finalizing a deal to acquire Luis Castillo from the Reds, reports Jeff Passan of ESPN (Twitter link). Assuming a deal gets across the finish line, it’ll be the biggest splash of the trade market thus far.
Castillo is perhaps the prize of the starting pitching market. He’s been of the game’s top trade candidates for months, with the last place Reds always likely to pull the trigger on a deal this summer. The right-hander has been one of the sport’s best pitchers over the past few seasons, and he’s worked at peak form over the past couple months.
After missing a few weeks due to shoulder soreness to open the year, Castillo made his season debut in early May and has looked like a bona fide top-of-the-rotation arm. He’s made 14 starts and worked 85 innings, pitching to a 2.86 ERA despite playing his home games in one of the league’s more hitter-friendly parks. Castillo has punched out a solid 25.8% of opposing hitters against a solid 8% walk rate. This season’s 47.1% grounder percentage is down a bit relative to his 2019-21 levels, but it remains a few points better than the league average.
That kind of high-end production is about what we’ve come to expect from Castillo, who has cemented himself as one of the sport’s top arms over the past few seasons. He’s posted an ERA under 4.00 in each of the past four seasons, carrying a cumulative 3.49 mark in 91 starts since the beginning of the 2019 campaign. That’s 24th among 98 qualified starters over that stretch. His 26.8% strikeout rate ranks 23rd among that group, while his 54.8% ground-ball percentage checks in 7th.
More to come.
