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The Great Vowel Shift. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift

Long story short you could say they rotated their vowel "wheel" a couple centuries ago - high vowels dropped lower, like a towards e, e towards i, and the lower ones got some upward movement towards a, like u and i.

The vowel probably shifted in English and the spelling wasn't adjusted. "Wal" in German is pronounced... almost like you'd expect, except it's a long 'a' without any of the usual markers for that (aa or ah). German spelling is more phonetic than English but less than Spanish.

So how will you render and pronounce castle and bath? Short or long and what is the reasoning that will make you prefer one over the other?

Welcome to Finnish where there are both "a" and "ä" to get different sounds, in a consistent fashion.