I'm Torn About Nick Castellanos
AU on the reduced playing time of the guy he will never compare to Tobias Harris.
In case you've been too busy analyzing grainy Joel Embiid practice footage or calculating the mathematical unlikelihood of a team blocking two fourth-quarter field goals in a row to notice, the Phillies have been radiating more positive vibes than an early Fountains of Wayne song lately. The division has been clinched, the first-round bye is all but locked, and the Phils are cruising into the playoffs with their most stocked team since at least 2011. Ace Zack Wheeler is out for the season and offense fuse-igniter Trea Turner has been lost for weeks; no matter, just about the entire team behind them is surging at once. Particularly the new guys: Turns out Harrison Bader is the reincarnation of 1980 George Brett and Jhoan Duran can also do a mean Dan Quisenberry impersonation. It could all come crashing down in the space of one game in October, but for now, it's all smiles and wet hair and beer funnels and shirtlessness.
Well, except for Nick Castellanos.
Time was when Casty was at the core of just about everything good or bad that happened with the Fightins. For his four years at CBP, he's had electric moments and horrific slumps and All-Star seasons and swings so bad you can't believe this is ostensibly what he does for a living. But he's always been there: When the team was ice-cold, he was the frostiest of the snowmen, and when the team was red-hot, he was the one doing the most convincing Liu Kang, but he was never not at the middle of all of it. Until now: Now, the guy who missed just 32 games in his first three and a half seasons with the Phillies has been a healthy scratch in eight of the last 20 games, only getting in to pinch hit in another three of those. The most consistent presence in this era of Phillies baseball is now officially just a part-timer, and it's making things weird. And I really don't know how to feel about it.
Last Friday against the Diamondbacks, Nick went 2-3 with a homer, the 250th of his career, helping to bust the game wide open in Arizona. It should have been a triumphant moment for him and the Phils, but it came in a game he didn't even start — and afterwards, both the broadcast crew and the locker-room press couldn't stop asking him about his reduced role on the team. Casty, never one to nice up any of his answers for anyone else's reassurance, answered the questions honestly and uncomfortably. Turns out he's not super-happy being on the bench, he doesn't have the best relationship with Rob Thomson, he's not sure what his role is gonna be on this team moving forward, he does think it's super-wack that people still make jokes about him homering whenever something big and dramatic happens in the news, as if something big and dramatic doesn't happen in the news five days out of every week now, most of which don't result in Nick Castellanos home runs. (OK that last one is actually me and not Nick — though I do imagine if you asked him about it, he'd go "that's dumb" and stare at you awkwardly until you either asked a less-annoying question or left him alone.)
It's a tough scene. For much of the year, he brought stability to a patchwork outfield situation where Brandon Marsh and Max Kepler weren't hitting and Johan Rojas was Johan Rojas. Now Marsh is on fire, the newly arrived Harrison Bader is hitting well enough to be as entrenched at the top of our lineup as prime Rickey Henderson, and even Kepler is starting to slug respectably. Castellanos, at the whiffy low point of a largely uninspiring season, is often finding himself the odd man out. It's hard to argue with: When Casty is not swinging a good bat, his relative leadenness in the outfield and on the basepaths all but ensure his overall negative impact, and WAR has indeed rated him a sub-replacement player on the season. He is not the kind of player this season who you move everything around to keep in the lineup no matter what.
And yet: What even is this team without Nick Castellanos? It's sort of hard to say: His arrival in 2022 coincided with the team's arrival at general MLB relevance, and since then, he's been the team's erratic heartbeat: the streaky, Scooby Doo-loving, hard-partying, irony-not-really-getting center of everything. Kyle Schwarber came on board at the same time and certainly has been more instrumental to the team's greatness, but Castellanos is the guy who seemed to really burrow into the team's DNA. I figured that the day we'd see him riding the pine when he could've been hitting fifth or sixth would be the day that this entire era of Phillies baseball was emphatically over.
And I was fine with that, really. Despite the complaints about his months-long droughts at the plate, the garment-rending about his miserable advanced stats, the endless comparisons to Tobias Harris — I had made my peace with Nick Castellanos being a key part of the Phillies for as long as he was alive and able. Last May, when he was still rocking an OPS under .600 (after a semi-lengthy hot streak was needed to elevate him there), I wrote in this column that "As bad as he gets, I would never consider clamoring for his benching or trading; Castellanos is occasionally just useless for months at a time and that's fine. Unlike Tobias, his finest moments will always endure as his most memorable, and everything else we just kinda accept, like a friend who's annoying a lot of the time but you would still never dream of not inviting along whenever the rest of your group is going out. I would be heartbroken to see him playing anywhere else." I still feel that way.
By basic logic, I get why Topper is no longer penciling him in the lineup everyday. No mathematical projection for this Phillies team would conclude that the team's chances of winning improve with Nick as an everyday player. Stil, it feels impossible to me that this team could win a World Series without him playing a major part; it feels unlikely that anything majorly, notably good could happen to them with him sulking on the bench. Alienating Casty risks offending the gods of baseball and Hanna-Barbera — it's just not right. I dunno if I'd quite say I'd rather go down with the ship with Castellanos springing leaks left and right, but I just can't imagine this team finally reaching the shore and him not leading the first drunken singalong. His drives into deep left field may no longer accurately reflect our nation's greatest mishaps, but who's to say what total anarchy we'd fall into without him there to even hit them in the first place?
Andrew Unterberger writes for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the 'If Not, Pick Will Convey as Two Second-Rounders' section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard.
Best case for him is a nice playoff pinch hit and an injury to someone else. He earned the bench. He also predicted it for himself with the “age like milk” comments last year in spring training after a terrible post season.