Detroit Tigers Prospect Watch: Willi Castro impressing in Toledo

The Detroit Tigers got a huge steal at last year’s trade deadline when they dealt OF Leonys Martin in exchange for minor league prospect SS Willi Castro from Cleveland. Castro’s bat has been on fire ever since coming over in that deal, and we hope he never cools down.

Through the first half last season before being a traded, Willi Castro hit .254/.303/.350. The Detroit Tigers took a flyer on him, and for Leonys Martin, this wasn’t a bad haul at all.

Castro was a player who had past success at the lower levels of minor league baseball but just hadn’t adjusted to Double-A yet. Boy, whoever was scouting Castro knew something others didn’t because he has turned into a completely different ballplayer since coming to the Tigers system.

Playing for the Erie SeaWolves for the majority of his time with the Detroit Tigers organization in 2018 before being called up to Triple-A Toledo for 5 games, Castro hit .324/.366/.562 with 4 homers in 26 games. He kept that going coming into 2019 with the AAA Toledo Mud Hens where he has been arguably the best hitting prospects in Detroit’s farm system.

This season he has hit to a tune of .313/.395/.461 with Toledo in 2019. His development has come along nicely since the trade while still quite young at the age of 22. It is not like he has been around for a long while, but maybe all needed was a change of scenery as a wake-up call to get him to start hitting. Whatever it was, it worked, and hopefully, Detroit fans will see him doing this for the Tigers someday. I think he is a candidate to get called up in September when rosters expand. Although, if the Tigers’ roster keeps it up with all of these injuries to the middle infield, he could be up a lot sooner.