PITTSBURGH -- For the Boston Red Sox, there has never been a debut quite like it. Rusney Castillo is not the first player to come to the Sox from a foreign land accompanied by some mystery and intrigue -- Daisuke Matsuzaka comes to mind.

But unlike Castillo, Matsuzaka was not a year and a half removed from competition when he arrived in 2007. Matsuzaka did not play in a place where the eyes of major league scouts were not welcome, as Castillo did in Cuba. And the Japanese pitcher did not parachute into a season in progress, the way Castillo is about to, then undergo his American-style baptism into baseball by playing on three different levels of the Red Sox minor league system.

Rusney Castillo's winding journey from Cuba to the major leagues will bring him to Pittsburgh for his Red Sox debut Wednesday. Courtesy Pawtucket Red Sox

And Wednesday night, according to manager John Farrell, Castillo, who signed a seven-year, $72.5 million contract last month, will make his major league debut in Pittsburgh's PNC Park, a jewel of a ballpark with a spectacular bridge-bedecked backdrop far removed from the dusty fields of Ciego de Avila, the city of his birth and the place where he cut his baseball teeth in the Series Nacionale, Cuba's national league.

"He's an electric player with a lot of skills -- he's explosive, quick-twitch," Farrell said here Tuesday. "We're looking forward to seeing him in this park."

Castillo had one last obligation to fulfill before heading to Pittsburgh. On Tuesday night, he was in Charlotte, North Carolina with the Pawtucket Red Sox, winners of the International League, who were playing the Omaha Storm Chasers, champions of the Pacific Coast League, in the Triple-A title game.

Castillo, who played center field and batted first for the PawSox, led off the game with a home run, his first as a U.S. professional. Farrell said Castillo will play center field here Wednesday night, but said his spot in the lineup was yet to be determined.

Castillo, who has celebrity representation in Roc Nation Sports, the agency that falls under the umbrella of Jay Z's entertainment empire, will be wearing No. 38, the number he wore in Cuba and the number famously worn by Curt Schilling in Boston. He is not expected to play in all 11 of the games left on the Red Sox's schedule after he arrives; Farrell noted he has other center fielders on the roster who will rotate into the lineup.

"I think the goal going in right now, for the games he's on the field, is for him to just experience this," Farrell said. "We've got a little read on him right now, on where his strengths and limitations might be, but that's just an initial view. We're still in the getting-familiar stage of all of this. Any judgment on my part is reserved until we get a chance to see him more."