Colorado Rockies: 3 things to know about Ryan Castellani

The Colorado Rockies will send right-handed pitcher Ryan Castellani to the mound to start on Saturday for his MLB debut.

The Colorado Rockies announced on Friday that they placed starting pitcher Chi Chi Gonzalez on the injured list with right biceps tendinitis. Manager Bud Black indicated before the game on Friday that the Rockies just “erred on the side of caution” with it after he experienced soreness after his start and during his bullpen session this week.

In a corresponding move, the club recalled right-handed pitcher Ryan Castellani from their alternate training site. Castellani, 24, was on the team’s taxi squad for road games to begin the season but he has yet to make his MLB debut. He will get the start for the Rockies on Saturday against the Seattle Mariners so many Rockies fans will be seeing him for the first time.

Here are some things that you should know about him before he makes his debut.

He was the Rockies 2nd round draft pick in 2014

In 2014, the Rockies had the 8th overall draft pick and they drafted Kyle Freeland with that pick out of the University of Evansville. They took outfielder Forrest Wall for the 35th overall pick and, later in 2018, they traded Wall to the Blue Jays for reliever Seunghwan Oh.

The Rockies’ next pick was Castellani, who was drafted by the Rockies in the 2nd round out of Brophy College Preparatory in Phoenix, Arizona, which is about 14 miles away from the Rockies Spring Training Facility in Scottsdale, Arizona.

He missed most of 2019 due to elbow surgery

Like most players, Castellani had his ups and downs in the minor leagues but he reached the Triple-A level in 2019. He struggled a lot in 10 starts (ERA of 8.31) but he was shut down in late June since he had to have elbow surgery.

He recovered quickly enough, though, to pitch in the Arizona Fall League. In five starts (16 2/3 IP), he had an ERA of 2.16 with 20 strikeouts and seven walks.

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Mechanically, he looks like Max Scherzer

Castellani’s delivery looks very much like Max Scherzer. However, he does not have the velocity that Scherzer has and he doesn’t have Scherzer’s control. Hence, why he is the Rockies #18 prospect, not the #1 prospect.

FanGraphs said this in December about Castellani.

"“It was yet another year of inconsistency and injury for Max Scherzer’s mechanical doppelgänger, Ryan Castellani, who was shelved for much of the summer due to a surgery that cleaned up bone chips in his elbow. Upon returning for the Fall League, Castellani was sitting 90-93 with his usual tailing action while flashing above-average secondary stuff.”"

That “above-average secondary stuff” includes a slider, curveball, and a changeup. MLB.com ranks all of his pitches as average or above average

Here’s some video of Castellani in 2018 in which he looks very much like Scherzer, mechanically.

Hopefully he can develop into a starting pitcher in Scherzer’s quality but for tonight, the Rockies will settle for a solid few innings to get the game started and keep the team in the game to try to win their 5th straight series to start the season.