{"id":2143,"date":"2010-12-03T16:27:05","date_gmt":"2010-12-03T22:27:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/?p=2143"},"modified":"2010-12-03T16:27:05","modified_gmt":"2010-12-03T22:27:05","slug":"starlin-castro-takes-batting-practice-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2143","title":{"rendered":"Starlin Castro Takes Batting Practice (Video)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In 2010, Starlin Castro<\/a><\/strong> finished 10th<\/sup> in the National League with a .300 batting average while playing in 125 games for the Chicago Cubs.\u00a0 Yet, what made the feat even more impressive was the fact the rookie shortstop did it as a 20-year old.<\/p>\n

Ranked by Baseball America as the 16th<\/sup> best prospect in baseball headed into the 2010 season, Castro was called up by the Cubs on May 7 after posting slashes of .376\/.421\/.569 in 26 games at Double-A Tennessee.\u00a0 In his first Major League game, not only did Castro crack a three run, opposite field homer in his first at-bat, but he also ripped a bases clearing triple to notch six RBI in his MLB Debut.<\/p>\n

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Although Castro only hit two more home runs over the course of the season, the youngster displayed a knack for making hard contact, as evidenced by his .345 BAbip<\/em>, 29 walks, <\/em>and 71 strikeouts in 463 at-bats.\u00a0 It will be interesting to see if Starlin\u2019s contact rate — as well as his batting average in general — will taper off in 2011, or if he might just be that rare breed of successful, free-swinging hitter.<\/p>\n

Here is a video of Castro taking batting practice before the Arizona Fall League\u2019s \u201cRising Stars Game\u201d in 2009:
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In 2010, Starlin Castro finished 10th in the National League with a .300 batting average while playing in 125 games for the Chicago Cubs.\u00a0 Yet, what made the feat even more impressive was the fact the rookie shortstop did it as a 20-year old. Ranked by Baseball America as the 16th best prospect in baseball […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,16,9,11,13,10,14,775],"tags":[1174,1173,260,259,1424,1423],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2143"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2143"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2146,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2143\/revisions\/2146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}