Positive early reviews for Welington Castillo

SARASOTA, Fla. - With Welington Castillo back inside the Orioles clubhouse and soon to be back in their lineup, the process continues of getting acclimated to a new pitching staff after signing as a free agent, spending about three weeks in camp and leaving for the World Baseball Classic.

Castillo sits at the locker once occupied by Matt Wieters, the popular former starting catcher and one of the leaders. His absence while playing for the Dominican Republic could have raised eyebrows and some doubts about his ability to learn the pitchers, but so far the reviews have been favorable.

Here's a sampling to peruse while the Orioles are enjoying their second and final off-day of spring training:

Darren O'Day

"Welington, from the time he got here he realized that he's got a lot of pitchers to learn, so I think he's kind of gone out of his way to try and start a dialogue about how you pitch. For me personally, I've talked to him quite a bit. He's caught me every time that I've thrown and I might take a little longer to learn than other pitchers just because I pitch differently, but he's done great.

"I've worked with him twice in the two games and really happy. Really good. Like the way he sets up. There's great targets for me to throw at. He's been great on sequences. Yeah, he's been great."

Dylan Bundy

"Big fan of him. I love the way he receives the ball back there. He seems willing to work with every single one of us in this clubhouse, as far as pitchers. I'm sure he's doing his work. Even though he's been on the road, I'm sure he's doing some research on some guys in this clubhouse. Just learning as much as he can while he's on the WBC team."

Bundy also talked about Castillo's pitch framing, or "presentation."

"You can notice it just with one pitcher out there. You can notice if he's trying to steal some strikes and stuff like that and so far from what I've seen it looks like he's done a pretty good job with it."

Brad Brach

"He receives the ball really well. He gives a real nice low target and blocked pretty much every ball I saw thrown in the dirt. Definitely excited to throw to him and looking forward in these next couple weeks to get a couple more chances to throw to him."

Brach wasn't worried about the length of time it would take for Castillo to learn a new staff.

"I think if it was a young guy I'd be more concerned, but he's been around, so he knows. I know he went out of his way to talk to guys. I've talked to him in passing a bunch. I threw to him one day and the next day in the weight room we had probably a five or 10 minute conversation about what I did that day, what I'm looking to do, what I want to do in the spring, what I normally do during the season, and it was real good. It was constructive.

"I think a guy who's been around a little bit, he knows what it takes to get to know guys. It was real quick and I think we're ready to go."

Kevin Gausman

"One thing I noticed right out of the gate was I think he's a really good low-ball catcher. I think a lot of the guys on this team throw sinkers. Bundy. I don't throw very many sinkers, but then you've got (Zach) Britton and Brad. Darren's got a lot of sink, too. Anytime you have a catcher like that who you think is going to be able to get you a lot of strikes down in the zone, it obviously helps. But yeah, it's tough.

"He's only caught me once, so those reps you normally get in spring, we don't really have those. But I don't think it will make that big of a difference. Usually, you catch a guy a couple times in a game and you get a feel for what he has and what he likes to throw in certain situations, and it will just get better as the season goes on."

Ubaldo Jiménez

"He caught my first start. He's good. He wants to learn everything that he needs to do and be able to be there for the pitchers. He put a lot of work into getting to know you and getting to know all the pitches that you throw and in what situation. He's going to be good.

"You can see what he was able to do in the WBC. That's not easy. He has to catch a Dominican staff, having guys he never caught before. And every single inning you've got a new guy throwing 98-99 and he was good."

Tyler Wilson

"He interacts really well with the pitchers, which is obviously the most important thing for a pitcher. Really good leader, really good charismatic personality, which is important to encourage pitchers to trust in the guy back there putting down the fingers. He obviously knows what he's doing.

"Has a great arm, really good target, low target, understanding of the strike zone and understanding how to work hitters. Pretty much everything that you could ask for in a solid catcher. And obviously, we got to watch him on TV doing an awesome job, too, throwing guys out and stuff. So I'm excited about him."

Mike Wright

"He caught me like we've been playing together forever. I told him some of the things I wanted and it was like, 'click.' Obviously, he's really good at throwing runners out and really solid at blocking. He's been really, really good to me."

Wright was surprised that it happened so quickly.

"Yeah, absolutely. Usually they say, 'Oh, you look like a buddy I had that was like this, and he likes doing this and this and this,' when it's not really like you. But like I said, we discussed kind of what my approach was and it was, 'OK, perfect. Boom.' It was right then and it was awesome."