Cubs Select Lendy Castillo in Rule 5 Draft

In the major league portion of the Rule 5 draft the Cubs surprisingly selected just one player: Lendy Castillo. As expected, they lost Ryan Flaherty (to the Orioles). Somewhat unexpectedly, the only other player taken from the Cubs was was Marwin Gonzalez (to the Red Sox, who traded him to the Astros). Pitchers Ryan Searle and Dae-Eun Rhee were spared.

As for the Cubs new member, Lendy Castillo is an interesting choice.

He recently converted to pitching from the infield, and already shows promise. He is a power pitcher with little experience, and that means both strike outs and walks for now. His K/9 numbers are good, his BB/9 are acceptable given the type of pitcher he is, and his HR/9 is very good. All in all, he’s not a bad selection, except for one minor detail…

He has never pitched above A ball. It is possible that the Cubs can manage to keep him on the 25 man roster as a middle reliever, possibly taking that role from Jeff Samardzija if Samardizja is moving to the starting rotation. On the other hand, he has only pitched about 100 innings in his professional career. Keeping a guy that raw on a major league roster would be a challenge for the Cubs. I suspect the Cubs will try to work a trade with Phillies in which they are able to keep Castillo regardless of his roster status, but that remains to be seen.

The good news is that the Cubs kept the pitching prospects they wanted to keep, lost two players from the farm system that they could afford to lose, and added another promising pitcher. Given the number of quality prospects the Cubs had exposed to the draft, I have to call that a good day.