It is March 9th, 2026. Blas Casta\u00f1o is getting A-side bullpen reps for the Mariners while some of his teammates are away playing for their respective teams in the World Baseball Classic. With so many regulars resting or away at the WBC, the field looks much more like one of his Triple-A Tacoma games than big-league spring training. He\u2019s not one to get nervous anyway\u2014and when he was, like on the day of his debut, the Mariners mental skills people were really good at their jobs\u2014but this environment feels familiar. Comfortable. Ten thousand people rather than thirty thousand.<\/p>\n
Plus, his slider has good movement on it today\u2014that harder vertical break he\u2019s been working on to coax a few more whiffs\u2014and his changeup feels good, ready to induce some ground balls. He hopes they\u2019ll give him a few innings to cover, show off his use as a swingman, but he\u2019s just happy to be with the A squad, the regulars who are left and the upper-minors guys he\u2019s played with the last two seasons. Ready to show he belongs. Taking the mound, he stomps his left foot into the rubber, announcing himself.<\/p>\n
It is March 9th, 2026. Blas Casta\u00f1o buttons up the fire engine red Angels jersey, just the third one he\u2019s had since his pro debut in 2018: from pinstripes to teal to this. But the Angels were giving him a chance as a starter again\u2014maybe they remembered his seven-inning start against Salt Lake in 2024. He\u2019d struck out a career-high 12 hitters that day and yelled as he came off the mound to end the seventh. He\u2019s always demonstrative on the mound but that day he\u2019d felt like he could pull the whole stadium out of the ground and throw it wherever he wanted. Maybe he could get that feeling back. He stomps his left foot into the rubber on the pitching mound, like maybe he can call it back out of the ground.<\/p>\n
It is March 9th, 2026. Blas Casta\u00f1o is back in Florida for spring training for the first time in years after signing a minor-league deal with the Twins and is enjoying the tropical weather, which feels more like home. He doesn\u2019t even mind the thunderstorms. It wasn\u2019t fun to get bumped off the 40-man roster in Seattle, the place he\u2019d made his debut, but he\u2019s keeping a positive mindset about this. The Twins have good pitching coaches and a lot of available spots in their bullpen, and they wanted him, jumping the line to pick him up from Seattle. And the first team he\u2019ll get to face is the Yankees, the team that signed him. It was always a complicated relationship, the first team that took a chance on, and then gave up on, you, but only magnified when it was an organization like the Yankees. Backfield game or not, he knows he\u2019ll bring his best stuff. His fastball has some extra heat on it, touching 95 today on the stadium gun, although he knows that\u2019s probably just nerves. He stomps his left food into the rubber and stares down his first hitter.<\/p>\n
It is March 9th, 2026. Blas Casta\u00f1o chucks his phone into a locker so he won\u2019t be tempted to check it during the showcase. There\u2019s a scout from the Doosan Bears who\u2019s already reached out, and a couple from NPB teams. Playing overseas wouldn\u2019t be so bad, he tells himself. The money was good, and there were more contact hitters who might put his stuff on the ground rather than over the fence. He winces, thinking of the last pitch he\u2019d thrown in a spring training game before getting DFA\u2019d that some Quad-A slugger with a 40% K rate had demolished onto the upper berm. But there will be scouts from big-league clubs there, too, looking to fill out minor-league rosters. He reminds himself, sternly, that a minor-league deal is his second choice. He\u2019d done his time\u2014years!\u2014in the minors, made his big-league debut\u2014something a great many players didn\u2019t ever get to do\u2014why go back to subsistence-level meals in dingy locker rooms to play in front of small crowds in small cities?<\/p>\n
Because it would always be his choice. He\u2019d rather have the slimmest chance at the best dream. Looking around the clubhouse, he knows every other guy in here currently actively ignoring their phones would make the same choice. He slams the locker shut and finishes lacing up his cleats before stepping onto the mound that will determine where his career points next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is March 9th, 2026. Blas Casta\u00f1o is getting A-side bullpen reps for the Mariners while some of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2392],"tags":[66354,5,620,4,619,65,38419,3235],"class_list":{"0":"post-521175","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-seattle-mariners","8":"tag-40-in-40","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-mariners","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-seattle","13":"tag-seattle-mariners","14":"tag-seattle-mariners-previews","15":"tag-seattlemariners"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115897368828643883","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}