Luis Castillo selected to the National League All-Star team

It’s officially official: Luis Castillo will represent the Cincinnati Reds in the 2019 All Star Game, just down the road in Cleveland, Ohio. It is the first All-Star selection for the 26 year old right hander.

This seems like a no-brainer, of course, as Castillo has been mostly brilliant this season. Castillo sits at number five on Baseball Reference’s WAR leaderboard for pitchers in all of Major League Baseball. He’s fifth on the leaderboard in ERA, too. His K/9 is all the way up to 10.5 currently. And while he could stand to cutdown his walk rate, when he’s had the change up on in games this season, he’s been nearly unhittable.

It’s very likely if Castillo keeps up his pace this season, he’ll garner quite a few Cy Young award votes, though he’s probably not all that close to winning it at this point, especially considering Hyun-Jin Ryu has an earned run average that begins with the number one.

Still, this is the type of season that Reds fans had in their mind when Luis Castillo made his great debut in 2017, and also flashed after a rough start in 2018. There are things that Castillo can improve on, but really, the sky’s the limit for Luis and the Reds.

For the time being, no other Reds player has been selected to the game, though I don’t think that’s all that surprising. Joey Votto and Yasiel Puig’s awful Aprils probably doomed them, and Derek Dietrich’s awful June probably slammed the door on any slight consideration he may have received back in May. Eugenio Suarez has also scuffled along lately.

You may be able to make a case for someone like Amir Garrett, who’s been great this season as well, as his 1.78 ERA and 261 ERA+ shows. Still, I’m not sure I’d call it a snub, necessarily. Plus, there’s plenty of time for someone to pull out of the game and Amir to be named a replacement.

Here’s the full NL squad: