Luis Castillo stared down the line on a typical Monday and watched third-base coach Sandy Alomar Sr. relay a typical call. A few moments later, Castillo had his orders. The sign was swing away. It typically is.
But Castillo didn't swing away. He didn't even consider it. Not with Jose Reyes tiptoeing off first base, eyeing second with liquid fire in his eyes. If Castillo swung, he might foul the ball off. He might pop it up. He might do a number of things that would impede his speedy teammate from nabbing yet another base.
So, instead, Castillo didn't even lift the bat off his shoulder until Reyes was standing on second -- his uniform a little dirtier, his smile a little brighter. Then Castillo bunted, sending Reyes to third. Seconds later, Reyes was home.
Castillo, it seems, is an awfully good guy for Reyes to have around.
"I'll take two strikes," Castillo said. "I'll take a pitch. If I see a high fastball, I'm not going to take a chance and make an out."
It's about the only chance Castillo won't take. He hobbles around the clubhouse like a wounded boxer, then bangs around the second-base bag with abandon. Castillo's not even close to 100 percent, yet he's the broken piece that makes his team complete. And since joining the Mets a month and a half ago, Castillo's given them a type of stability that they've lacked at second base for quite some time.
Not bad for a quick fix.
General manager Omar Minaya imported Castillo to patch the hole formed when Jose Valentin fractured his right leg, ending his season just before the trade deadline. Minaya knows that such patches don't always fit so snugly -- and last-minute patches rarely do. And he also knows that sometimes there's room for exceptions.
So consider Castillo a glaring one. He's hit .275 since jumping over to the Mets, with one homer and six stolen bases. That's fine. But in the context of his value to the team, it means absolutely nothing.
The truth is, Castillo could hit .350 or he could hit .200, and his value wouldn't change all that much. The Mets acquired him, after all, for defense, and that remains his primary concern.
It's a chore he hasn't taken lightly. Castillo glides around second base better than most, with a steady glove and strong -- albeit fading a bit at 32 -- range. With Reyes, he's formed a slick double-play duo, and to his left, he's given the aging first-base trio of Carlos Delgado, Shawn Green and Jeff Conine a generous margin for error.
Castillo hasn't been particularly flashy, but flashy doesn't win games -- routine does.
"You can look," said backup Ruben Gotay. "He's always in the right spot. That comes from somebody who plays the game every day, who knows the game."
Gotay's not your typical Castillo fan, either. Before the Mets traded for their shiny new second baseman -- and it still seems like a steal, with Minaya swapping two low-level prospects who have yet to play a lick above Double-A -- Gotay was the man entrusted to be a rock at second. That experiment lasted all of two weeks, leaving Castillo with a starting job and Gotay with an awful lot of time to ponder his future -- and to learn.
"I see him play, how easy he does it," Gotay said. "It's good to see him play, so I can get better."
Castillo has also begun to expand the Mets' vocabulary of what exactly a routine play is. On Monday, with Braves pitcher Tim Hudson venturing a bit too far off second base, Castillo locked eyes with pitcher Oliver Perez, bolted for the bag and caught Hudson snoozing.
"I've been trying to get him to do it all year," manager Willie Randolph said of Perez. "I said, 'See? This is what happens.'"
This is what happens now that Castillo is here to lead. He does it on offense, too, giving the Mets the natural No. 2 hitter they've needed. Reyes credits his recent surge in stolen bases -- he swiped 23 in August before cooling off a bit in September -- almost exclusively to Castillo's presence behind him in the lineup. He'll take two pitches, unafraid to hit with two strikes. If Castillo sees Reyes run, he won't swing, no matter how fat a fastball looks.


"When I get on base, he takes two strikes right down the middle and lets me steal. And then he's going to bunt move me over. He's a team player. That's what you need." -- Jose Reyes, on Luis Castillo's plate discipline
And once Reyes is on second, Castillo becomes a magician with the bat, capable of bunting and slapping to the right side at will -- anything to move Reyes another 90 feet.
"When I get on base," Reyes said, "he takes two strikes right down the middle and lets me steal. And then he's going to bunt move me over. He's a team player. That's what you need."
Castillo first learned the craft hitting behind another premier base stealer in Miami, Juan Pierre. And he's since perfected it into something of a science.
"All this stuff I try to do is to win some games," Castillo said. "One run is a big run."
So process all those abilities, blend them together and you've got one heck of a second baseman. Most of it won't show up on stat sheets dominated by home runs and RBIs, but Castillo does mostly everything else well -- and considering the price the Mets paid to get him, one might be inclined to call it exceptional.
Yet there's more to his story than that. Castillo limps -- literally limps -- around the clubhouse from day to day. He sports a hulking bandage before games on his balky right knee, wrapping it time and again in yet another process the second baseman has made a routine.
Lately, that wrap has been growing. Castillo missed three games in late August with his sore knee, and he's been taking regular days off -- the most recent of those a late scratch on Wednesday -- ever since.
Yet when he plays, the knee looks perfect. Castillo continues to glide around the infield, all signs of the limp gone. Go figure.
"I play to win," Castillo said. "I like to win some games, and I don't think about my knee hurting. If something happens out in the field, it happens. I have to take a chance. I have to play hard and do the best I can. Sometimes I feel it, but when I'm in the field, I totally forget everything."
And his Willy Wonka act is not without admirers.
"He's tough," Reyes said. "Maybe he's got a little soreness in his knee, but he wants to play. That's all that matters. You've got a guy hungry to play."
It's noble, to be sure. Yet it also begs the question as to what that knee means for Castillo's future and his future with the Mets. It's no secret that, some of his best skills -- namely, his speed and his range -- are eroding. A balky knee only heightens that decline.
It's also no secret that Castillo will be a free agent at season's end -- that's precisely why he came so cheap to begin with. The Mets have a capable backup in Gotay, who has proven himself offensively, if not yet defensively. But they had one chance already to give Gotay the job, and they opted to turn in a different direction.
What the Mets won't find is much help elsewhere. With most of the game's top second basemen still in the early portions of their careers, precious few will be available this offseason. Not to mention that the Mets can't count on Valentin, who's a free agent himself and all but committed to knee surgery after the season.
So with all that in mind, the Mets might be even more inclined to throw cash Castillo's way, whether they were planning on it or not.
"Right now, we at least have the opportunity to see him play with us," Minaya said after the acquisition. "He's probably a guy that we were going to look at. Now, we have a better opportunity to look at him."
Since then, the Mets have been looking at his knee, just as they've been looking at his glove and the bat. Castillo provides a hefty benefit, to be sure -- one that comes neatly packaged with a comparable risk.
The Mets just have to figure out which outweighs which.
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