Ouch! Willi Castro sets Twins record for getting hit by pitches in a season

CLEVELAND – It feels good, Willi Castro said Thursday, to set an all-time Twins record — but then, remembering the dark bruise on his right calf, he reconsidered.

“No, not getting hit by the pitch,” Castro corrected. “But [the record] is going to be there for the rest of my life. Yeah, that feels good.”

Castro left foot was nicked by a Tanner Bibee fastball in the fifth inning on Wednesday, making Castro the first Twins player ever to be hit by 20 pitches in a single season. In the 10th, Castro took a Hunter Gaddis slider off his calf, producing that bruise and extending his lead over Chuck Knoblauch’s team record of 19, set in 1996.

It’s a tough way to reach the record books, but Castro is OK with it. “I don’t mind, as long as they don’t hit me in my head,” the utility man said. “Sometimes when I see a guy throwing wild, I just try to be on top of the plate, just trying to get that free base. It’s like a walk.”

It is, and that’s why Twins manager Rocco Baldelli — who was hit 31 times in his major-league career — was happy for Castro, too.

“As long as he’s still on the field, it’s not a terrible record. It’s a painful record, but it’s something that’s actually helping our team,” Baldelli said. “He’s finding his way on base an extra [21] times over the course of a season. That’s pretty incredible.”

The pain is real, though. Castro winced as he recalled the Twins’ three-game series in Pittsburgh in June.

Castro tends to crowd the plate, and knows that scouting reports instruct pitchers to throw him fastballs inside. At top velocity, they don’t have to miss by much to plunk him.

It’s not fun “getting smoked over and over again, but teams are going to try to spin him,” Baldelli said. “Heaters in, sliders down and in — they’re going to keep pitching him this way. You’re kind of rolling the dice, but as long as he doesn’t catch one in the wrong spot, we’ll take the baserunners.”

Earlier this year, the Twins were on pace to break the MLB record for hit batsmen as a team — it’s 112 by the 2022 Mets — but with 98 now, it’s unlikely they’ll get there. And the Mariners, with 108 entering Thursday, are ahead of them anyway.

But the Twins obviously have several players who may as well wear targets on their uniforms. Players like Matt Wallner and Ryan Jeffers, who have been plunked 14 times apiece. And they want more, too.

Wallner “told me yesterday — I’m going to be there next year,” Castro said with a smile.

“I told him, ‘Be aggressive. With two strikes, make a good pitch. That’s it. Relax. Calm down. This is your game. Find your game. We need you,’ " said Santana, a former catcher. “Something to get him confident. The next two at-bats, he got strikeouts.”

Duran has converted 23 of his 25 save opportunities, but he owns a 3.99 ERA. He’s giving up more ground-ball hits and his strikeout rate is down from 33% last season to 27.8% now.

“Look, we need him,” said Santana, who has played in 30 career postseason games. “I want him to feel confident. He has good pitches. This is what I try to tell him.”

Duran admits he’s had “a lot of troubles” this season, and he’s trying to simplify his approach: Throw strikes, don’t help opponents with wild pitches and hit batters, and execute better in two-strike counts. Duran has a 5.68 ERA in 21 appearances since the All-Star break.

“I try to listen to everybody and follow my plan,” Duran said. “[Santana’s] got a lot of experience, a lot of years in the league. They can see better than me. Sometimes when we’re throwing, we don’t see what I don’t do good. When I throw one pitch, and I shouldn’t have thrown that pitch, and if he sees it, he may come to me [and say], ‘Don’t throw that pitch. They’re sitting on that pitch.’ "