Overview:
Michael Stefanic entered this weekend with a .485 batting average in 17 Spring Training games with the Oakland Athletics while Marcos Castañon has hit .333 in 15 games with the San Diego Padres
Home runs are where the heart is in Major League Baseball.
Just ask a pair of aspiring big leaguers from the infields of Santa Barbara: Westmont College graduate Michael Stefanic and former UC Santa Barbara star Marcos Castañon.
Both players have been reassigned to their minor league camps despite extremely successful showings during Major League spring training in Arizona.
Stefanic made a super-human, last-ditch effort to make the Sacramento Athletics’ roster for Opening Day, which is Friday at the American League champion Toronto Blue Jays.
He went an unworldly 13-for-17 at the plate from Monday, March 9, to Sunday, March 15. That computes to a batting average of .765, which would be the envy of even most slo-pitch softball hitters.
His hot streak entering this weekend boosted his spring average to .485 (16-for-33), which ranked highest on the club for any A’s player with more than eight at-bats.
It continued his unlikely journey in professional baseball. It began when the Los Angeles Angels signed him to a free-agent contract after a rash of injuries opened a spot on their rookie ball team in July 2018.
Stefanic went 3-for-3 — all singles — in last Sunday’s game against the Cleveland Guardians. A few hours later, he was sent to the minors.
Perfect apparently isn’t good enough.
“In my heart, I really feel like there’s a place in the game for people like me,” he said.
The rap on Stefanic, a 5-foot-9 and 180-pound utility infielder, is that he raps base hits and not home runs.
He’s gotten 99 MLB at-bats during parts of four seasons — three with the Angels and last summer in a nine-game stint with the Blue Jays — and has yet to hit a homer.
A lack of long shots has made Stefanic a long shot to stick in the big leagues.
“That complete lack of power is difficult to make work in the majors,” said Nick Deeds of MLB Trade Rumors.
“Luis Arráez is virtually the only player in the modern game to find any sort of sustained success with that sort of approach.”
Stefanic did crank a 404-foot shot over the left-centerfield fence against Cleveland lefthander Sammy Peralta during a March 13 spring training game at American Family Fields of Phoenix.
But he knows better than to change his approach as a batter.
“I’m never going to be a guy who hits 20, 30 homers … and when I try to hit homers, I’m not very good,” Stefanic said. “But I can be the guy who gets on base and turns those solo shots into two-run and three-run homers.
“So I’m going to continue to play my game and try to be the best version of myself.
“That’s what got me to the big leagues, and I’m going to stick with my plan.”
That plan has resulted in a career batting average of .323 over the course of nine minor-league seasons.
His 3.7% swinging strike rate since his first full season of 2019 and contact rate of well over 90% ranks among the top 10 of all minor leaguers during that time period.
Stefanic’s analytical explanation?
“It’s the dangedest thing,” he said. “Whenever I swing, I usually hit the ball.”
Robert Ruiz, Westmont’s former head baseball coach and current athletic director, did a deeper dig on the subject:
“His baseball instincts and IQ are about as advanced as any player I have ever coached,” he said.
Hit Parade
Stefanic still holds Westmont’s career record for hits (275) and ranks seventh all-time for batting average (.363).
“I enjoyed my four years there not only on the baseball field but on campus, as well,” he told Noozhawk. “I just loved it there.
“And it just so happened to work out that I got an opportunity to play pro ball, too.”
Lou Marson, who coached Stefanic for the Angels’ Triple-A farm club in Salt Lake City, believes he belongs at the top level of pro ball.
“The way he swings the bat and stays in the zone and barrels the ball, you have to be intrigued by it,” he said.
But it’s not easy to build a résumé in the majors when you get only random at-bats.
He’s logged a career MLB batting average of .227 even though he’s struck out only 14.9% of the time.
“I just didn’t play very well when I got my opportunities,” Stefanic said. “I hit a lot of groundballs right at guys.
“And with how good these defenders are at the big-league level, that just doesn’t play.”
Toronto, which is stacked with one of Major League Baseball’s most potent lineups, kept him at Triple-A Buffalo after last season.
The Bison players had voted him their most inspirational player, but it didn’t inspire him enough to shuffle back to Buffalo.
Stefanic opted for free agency on Nov. 2 and signed a minor-league contract with the Athletics six weeks later. That deal came with the carrot of an invitation to the A’s Major League camp for spring training.
“I think it’s just a testament to me not taking no for an answer and trusting my abilities,” he said, “knowing that not only am I good enough to compete, I’m good enough to make it to the top and stay there.”
His batting average was at the top of the Athletics’ spring statistics. He plans to be an A’s Lister before the summer is through.
Homer, Sweet Homer
Castañon, like Stefanic, is a utility infielder who has spent most of the spring at second and third bases.
The San Diego Padres also gave him a look at first base during Friday’s game against the Colorado Rockies. He entered this weekend with a spring training batting average of .333.
He was assigned to “San Diego Padres Prospects” on March 5, which means the club believes he has Major League promise but needs more development.
Castañon’s ability to hit home runs put him on the organization’s radar.
He made a power move with his hitting stroke when he added a high leg kick even before he came to UCSB from Carter High School in Rialto
“I used to do only a little leg stride,” he said. “I was hitting BP one day, and my dad was like, ‘Hey, you need to hit for power if you want to be a big leaguer.’
“I just started doing it and it’s stuck ever since.”
He batted .579 with five homers as a high school senior before spending four years at UCSB.
“Andrew Checketts did a good job of recruiting me,” Castañon said. “It was a winning program and something I wanted to be a part of.
“It was the best experience of my life, for sure, and we had a lot of winning teams, so it was also fun.”
But that also came with a spate of injuries followed by the COVID-19 cancellation of the 2020 season.
It finally came together for Castañon when he returned from a hand injury halfway through his senior season of 2021 to help Gauchos advance to the NCAA tournament.
He batted .404 with eight homers and 10 doubles while driving in 40 runs in just 28 games. It convinced the Padres to pick him in the 12th round of that summer’s MLB draft.
“It was kind of a weird situation,” Castañon said. “But I came back and finished good, and I had a pretty good feeling that I’d get drafted.
“Thankfully, the San Diego Padres took an opportunity on me.”
He rewarded them by hitting 23 home runs the next year at Low-A Lake Elsinore.
That broke the franchise record for that level of 21 homers set in 2017 by Fernando Tatis Jr., who has since become a three-time MLB All-Star.
Castañon grew up in San Bernardino, just 45 miles from Lake Elsinore.
“It was pretty cool to be a player there,” he said. “It was cool for my family, too, that they could pretty much watch me on a nightly basis.”
He’s hit 47 homers in the three seasons that have followed, mostly at Double-A San Antonio.
Castañon batted .300 with three more homers in 16 games when he was promoted to Triple-A El Paso late last year.
He kept hitting in spring training. One of his most recent knocks put an exclamation point to the exhibition season: a 419-foot homer against the Athletics on March 13.
He remains confident that his MLB debut will come soon enough.
“I think it was just staying within myself and trusting my abilities that I hit in high school and college, and just trusted myself that I can go out there … and my best is good enough,” Castañon said.
“It’s kind of been the story of my career, of getting overlooked, and knowing that my best is always going to be good enough.”
