The final numbers weren’t pretty, but Luis Castillo showed plenty of encouraging signs in his Chicago White Sox debut against the Red Sox.
Thursday night’s game in Boston marked the Chicago White Sox debut of newly acquired right-hander Luis Castillo.
After being acquired in a trade with the Seattle Mariners shortly before the deadline, the 33-year-old took the mound for the White Sox, hoping to salvage a game against the red-hot Red Sox and increase Chicago’s lead in the AL Central to 4.0 games.
Of course, he had his work cut out for him. Entering Thursday night, Chicago was 0-5 against Boston this season and had been outscored 33-4. And while Chicago took an early lead and remained ahead for practically the entire game, the White Sox ultimately fell in 13 innings by a final score of 12-11.
It was an incredibly deflating loss for the White Sox and one of the more difficult ones to stomach from the 2026 season. The game made even worse by Joey Bart going down with a broken hand.
Just looking at the box score, you’d probably think Castillo let his new team down in a major way. He completed just four innings, allowing six hits and five earned runs. But the statistics don’t do justice to how sharp Castillo looked for most of the evening. His numbers against the Red Sox were simply a reflection of facing baseball’s hottest team and falling victim to some brutal batted-ball luck.
Castillo's Bad Luck in Boston
Connor Wong’s two-run home run in the bottom of the third inning, which got the Red Sox on the board, came on a well-placed slider from Castillo on the outer half of the zone. He appeared to have Wong off balance and out on his front foot. But with a two-strike swing intended simply to make contact, Wong found the barrel and flipped a line-drive home run over the Green Monster in left field.
The Red Sox then rallied for three runs against Castillo in the bottom of the fourth to tie the game at 5-5. They did it with back-to-back infield singles, one of which was misplayed by Miguel Vargas and should have resulted in an inning-ending double play. That was followed by an 83 mph bloop double and an 88 mph bloop double.
Nobody on the Red Sox was hitting the ball particularly hard against Castillo. But when you’re hot, you’re hot, and Boston’s hitters consistently got just enough luck to find some green grass. That adds up over time.
So if you’re a White Sox fan who woke up on Friday morning and took a look at the box score from the previous night, rest assured that Castillo performed much better than the numbers would suggest. He also erased any doubt I had about what he can bring to the White Sox during the second half of the season.
The stuff is very much still there, and he was locating it extremely well. Castillo will be an upgrade for the White Sox starting rotation. Perhaps when he isn’t facing the hottest team in baseball in a hitter-friendly ballpark, or even if the batted balls simply bounce his way next time, Castillo will finish with a much more respectable stat line.
A pitcher can only control what he can control, and Castillo did a nice job executing his pitches. The rest is simply baseball, which can be unfair at times.
This week’s series was another deflating one against Boston, but despite getting swept, Chicago was fortunate enough to maintain its 3.0-game lead in the AL Central heading into a weekend series with the Cleveland Guardians.
The White Sox will still need Castillo down the stretch, and I remain confident that he’ll prove to be a productive addition.
