{"id":324032,"date":"2025-12-01T12:30:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T12:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/324032\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T12:30:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T12:30:09","slug":"npbs-chiba-lotte-marines-sign-jose-castillo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/324032\/","title":{"rendered":"NPB’s Chiba Lotte Marines Sign Jose Castillo"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Chiba Lotte Marines of Nippon Professional Baseball announced the signing of left-hander Jose Castillo<\/a>.\u00a0 The Mets chose to non-tender Castillo earlier this month, passing on the southpaw\u2019s projected<\/a> $1.7MM arbitration salary.<\/p>\n

The move overseas to Japan may seem like small potatoes given the transactional maelstrom that was Castillo\u2019s 2025 season.\u00a0 He saw big league action for four different teams (the Diamondbacks, Mets, Mariners, and Orioles) while compiling a 3.94 ERA over 32 innings.\u00a0 Beginning the season on a minor league deal with Arizona, Castillo was designated for assignment in May and then traded to the Mets, and he subsequently bounced around on a series of waiver claims.\u00a0 Castillo actually had three separate stints with the Mets, with the latest coming in early November when he was claimed off Baltimore\u2019s waiver wire.<\/p>\n

Castillo is out of minor league options, making him a necessary DFA candidate whenever a team wants to move him off its active roster.\u00a0 He would probably be facing another round of designations, outright assignments, and waiver wire visits if he\u2019d signed a minor league deal with a Major League team this winter, so it perhaps isn\u2019t surprising that Castillo has opted for the relatively security (and a guaranteed salary) of this deal with the Marines.<\/p>\n

Though Castillo has pitched in parts of five MLB seasons, that resume consists of his 32 innings in 2025, 38 1\/3 innings with the Padres in his 2018 rookie season, and just two innings spread over a single game with the Padres in each of the 2019, 2022, and 2023 campaigns.\u00a0 Multiple injuries (including a Tommy John surgery) shelved Castillo for almost the entirety of the 2019-21 seasons, and he pitched primarily in the minors with the Padres, Marlins, and Diamondbacks from 2022-24.<\/p>\n

While a small sample size of big league work, Castillo\u2019s career 4.11 ERA, 27.1% strikeout rate, and 9.6% walk rate are all respectable for a pitcher with such a journeyman resume.\u00a0 He also has a 4.21 ERA over 130 1\/3 career innings at the Triple-A level.\u00a0 Control has been an issue for Castillo, but he has always been able to rack up strikeouts and generate grounders.\u00a0 Castillo doesn\u2019t turn 30 until January, so there\u2019s still plenty of time for the left-hander to explore a future move back to North American baseball depending on how things work out during his Marines tenure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Chiba Lotte Marines of Nippon Professional Baseball announced the signing of left-hander Jose Castillo.\u00a0 The Mets chose…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[147338,363,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-324032","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-jose-castillo","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}