Twins’ Willi Castro on a record run of getting hit by pitches

Willi Castro set a new Twins record over the weekend. He reacted to his historic moment by slamming his helmet to the ground in anger.

Getting hit by five pitches in four games, it seems, isn’t as much fun as it looks.

“Obviously I wasn’t happy, [but] I know he wasn’t trying to hit me,” Castro said of his reaction Sunday when Pirates reliever Ben Heller hit him while the bases were loaded in the 10th inning of the Twins’ 11-5 victory. “I didn’t get [mad] just because he hit me. I got [mad] because it hurt.”

Castro said he has a lot of bruises from the series in Pittsburgh, after getting hit twice Saturday and twice Sunday. Combined with one in Yankee Stadium on Thursday, he became the first player in Twins history to be hit five times in four games, breaking the previous team record of four, owned by Corey Koskie (2004) and Craig Kusick (1975). That gives him nine for the season, one short of Ryan Jeffers’ major league-leading total.

While Castro is not trying to get drilled by errant pitches, he acknowledged it’s a byproduct of his crowd-the-plate hitting strategy.

“I just think the reports are, throw me hard in, probably. I like to be on the plate, that’s probably why some of them, they miss and hit me,” he said. “And the slider, back foot, they’re trying to get me to chase those pitches. But I’m doing a pretty good job this year letting those pitches go by. That’s why they hit me, they’re trying to throw a slider in, and a fastball in too.”

It worries his manager a little, considering Heller’s pitch was traveling 97.3 mph, according to Statcast, and the Kyle Nicolas fastball that hit him in four innings earlier was clocked at 99.2.

“Of course. I don’t want anyone getting hit by 100-mph fastballs. … We have a couple of guys in our organization who are going to get pitched inside,” Rocco Baldelli said. “Willi Castro against righthanded pitching, they’re going to try to get in on him, whether it be with fastballs up or breaking balls down by his feet.”

On the bright side, Baldelli said: “I’m going to remind him that his numbers are going to look better after getting hit. … The guys that get hit a lot, they’re on base a lot because of it. They’re scoring runs. We’re probably winning more games because of it.”

Maybe his team-high .343 on-base percentage was part of the reason, but on Monday, Castro became the eighth different Twins batter to bat at the top of the order.

Then again, Baldelli acknowledged, maybe that wasn’t part of it.

“I don’t mind just mixing it up and moving guys around,” Baldelli said. “Sometimes it creates a little bit of adrenaline for guys, moving around to different places. I’m very far away from guys feeling like they have to hit in the same spot every day. I don’t even consider that anymore.”

He’s used 61 lineups in the season’s first 66 games, so the players are certainly used to checking to see where they’re hitting every day.

As it should be, Baldelli said. “Some of it’s performance-related. Some of it is who we’re facing. Sometimes the rest of the lineup kind of pushes someone else to a different spot, and sometimes that’s the leadoff spot.

“I know that’s not something we see all the time in our game, but that’s the way we do it here.”

The Twins took a brief moment before the game to have fans acknowledge Jake Cave. The Colorado outfielder played in 335 games for the Twins from 2018 to ‘23, hitting .235 with 33 home runs and 118 RBI.

Cave played for the Phillies last year, so he never made the trip back to Target Field, as the Twins’ only series against him was in Philadelphia in August. He was sold to the Rockies in March and started in left field Monday, going 1-for-2 before Elehuris Montero pinch hit for him against Twins lefthander Steven Okert in the seventh inning.