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What went wrong for Nick Castellanos during first season with Phillies?

Nick Castellanos had a disappointing first season with the Phillies. (David J. Griffin/Icon Sportswire)

Nick Castellanos made two game-saving catches in the postseason, and a World Series run generally shielded him from the criticism a player receives when they underperform during the first season of a major contract.

But make no mistake, Castellanos severely underperformed in his first season as a Phillie, after the team signed him to a five-year/$100 million free-agent deal in March. Getting him right will have to be one of the top priorities for the Phillies this winter, especially with the increasing possibility that two-time National League MVP Bryce Harper may not be ready for Opening Day.

The Phillies knew when they signed Castellanos that he wasn’t a Gold Glove caliber fielder, or even a replacement level one. Had Harper not suffered a torn UCL in April, Castellanos likely would have been the primary DH for the team. Instead, he ended up being the team’s starting right fielder, and finished the season with -9 defensive runs saved and -11 outs above average.

Even if Castellanos ends up in right field to begin the 2023 season, the plan for the remaining four years of his contract has to be to limit how much time he spends in the field. But to justify having a player who primarily serves as your DH — rather than rotating different options into the spot as the Phillies did during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season — that person better be a hell of an offensive player.

And Castellanos certainly wasn’t that in 2022, slashing .263/.305/.389 with 13 home runs, 62 RBIs and just a .694 OPS. Castellanos isn’t a player that’s going to walk a ton (he had just 29 walks this past season) so when he’s not consistently driving the ball, he becomes a liability. And the -0.7 WAR — FanGraphs says this was the third worst mark among all qualified position players in 2022 — that he posted suggests that’s what he was for much of his first season in red pinstripes.

President of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski met with the media Wednesday morning to wrap up the 2022 season. One of the players he was most frequently asked about was Castellanos, who he signed to a major free-agent deal nearly 12 years after using a first-round pick on him for the Detroit Tigers.

“Well, I mean, Castellanos is normally an offensive force,” Dombrowski said. “I mean, he can hit. And he uses the whole field, he drives the ball.

“I think probably one of his biggest problems, is he has always been in a situation where he’s not a real disciplined strike zone hitter. This year he was even worse in that regard,” Dombrowski acknowledged. “So I don’t think that helped him at times.”

According to Baseball Info Solutions, Castellanos has a 37.8% career O-Swing percentage, a metric that measures “the percentage of pitches a batter swings at outside the strike zone.” That number spiked all the way to a career-high 43.6% in 2022. Only Javier Báez — who also had a very disappointing first year after signing a major free-agent deal with the Tigers — had a worse mark in 2022, swinging at 48.7% of pitches outside the strike zone.

Castellanos is never going to have an eye like Barry Bonds at the plate, but getting him to swing at less pitches out of the zone in 2023 will definitely be something of a focus.

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Did Castellanos Play Through An Injury In 2022?

In 2021, Castellanos slashed .309/.362/.576 with 34 home runs, 100 RBIs and a .939 OPS. In what turned out to be his final season with the Cincinnati Reds, Castellanos finished 12th in NL MVP voting and won his first career Silver Slugger Award.

There’s something to be said for playing 81 times a year at Great American Ball Park, which graded out as the second most hitter-friendly park in 2022. But Castellanos emerged as one of the better hitters in baseball during parts of seven seasons with the Tigers, despite eventually calling Comerica Park — which is 345 feet to left field and 420 feet to dead center field — “a joke.” So even if Citizens Bank Park isn’t quite as hitter friendly as GABP, there was no reason to think Castellanos should experience a dramatic decline in offensive production by playing his home games in Philadelphia.

So as Castellanos did see a dramatic decline in offensive production this past season, many tried to come up with theories as to why. Castellanos did miss a bulk of the month of September with a strained right oblique, and that may very well have been why he hit just .185 in 65 postseason at-bats. But was there another injury earlier in the season that could explain why much of the season felt like a struggle for Castellanos?

“No,” Dombrowski said. “Well, I can’t say he ever had nothing, but nothing of major consequence. But really at the end, it’s a shame because he really started to swing the bat batter. And then he had the oblique, which shut him down. And we had to hurry him back, of course, for the postseason. So it’s hard to kind of jump in after that time down and come back and hit. So he gave it everything he could, he had some good plate appearances, but I don’t think that at the end of the season would be his actual best because he just didn’t have the time to come back and properly get his timing back.”

It should be pointed out that Castellanos actually got off to a pretty solid start with the Phillies, hitting .300 with three home runs, 12 RBIs and an .849 OPS in April.

Castellanos was then hit by a pitch on his right wrist in a May 5 loss to the New York Mets. At the time, x-rays were negative and his injury was just called a “wrist contusion.” Given that Castellanos dealt with a right wrist microfracture during the 2021 season and saw his 2022 production plummet after a strong April, there was quite a bit of speculation that it would be revealed after the season that he had played through a wrist injury that hampered his play in his first season with the Phillies.

No dice.

“No, not that I [know of],” manager Rob Thomson said Wednesday when asked if Castellanos was dealing with a wrist injury for much of 2022. “I think he got hit in the wrist, but I don’t think that affected him.”

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“A Lot Of Shit Going On“

Playing in Philadelphia isn’t for everyone, especially if you have thin skin. But before playing in Cincinnati, Castellanos had a lengthy stint in Detroit, a pretty demanding sports town. He found immediate success when traded to the Cubs in 2019, and fans in Chicago have quite a bit of similarities to those in Philadelphia.

So not being able to handle the pressure that comes with signing a major deal with the Phillies doesn’t seem like the right answer to what caused Castellanos to struggle in 2022.

“I don’t think this market was his reason behind not performing,” Dombrowski said. “Some people, I think, could be like that. I don’t think that was his reason. I think he’s always hit, and you look at people who are hitters, they do have down times. Sometimes they try too hard, coming off of being a free agent. He did have a lot of adjustments in his life. I mean, the whole thing he really needs to work through, it just didn’t happen for him. But I think having all that with the winter time where you can kind of just settle in and be ready to go, I think will benefit him a great deal.”

Throughout the day, it was suggested that Castellanos had trouble adjusting to being in a new city, and learning everything that goes with playing for a new team in the same summer that he and his wife, Jess, welcomed their second child.

“I’m not sure how much of it also was him dealing with all the adjustments that just come with signing with a new club … all the adjustments of a new baby coming into the life in May … some of that could be from a mental perspective,” Dombrowski said.

Bryce Harper’s first child was born during the 2019 season, his first with the Phillies. Zack Wheeler pitched during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season shortly after his first child was born, also his first campaign with the Phillies. It’s not uncommon for a player to welcome a new child during the season and continue to produce at the level they have throughout the course of their career.

But we don’t know all the details behind the birth of Castellanos’ second child, nor should we, it’s not our business. However, it’s evident that, as Tom Brady so eloquently put it over the summer, that Castellanos “had a lot of shit going on.” Athletes are humans too.

“Yeah, I think he got off to a little bit of a slow start,” Thomson said. “And there were some other things … having the baby and some adjustments he had to make and I think he may have gotten tired and then got out of his swing. And then, he started to get it, and then he had the ribcage [the oblique injury] and then it was tough coming back after that.”

Near the end of Dombrowski’s media availability, he was asked whether an effort needs to be made to help improve Castellanos’ confidence and mental wellbeing from a baseball sense.

“I think he deals with that,” Dombrowski said. “I won’t get into specifics on what we have from that. But he’s dealing with a lot of different things to try to get ready for next year.”

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So, What’s Next?

Thomson wasn’t 100% sure, but seemed to believe that hitting coach Kevin Long — who recently received a contract extension — will visit with Castellanos after the holiday season, as the former All-Star tries to bounce back in 2022.

And for his part, Dombrowski expects that with some time to decompress and make adjustments, Castellanos’ age-31 season will be much better than his age-30 campaign.

“There’s no reason why he still should not hit with authority,” Dombrowski said. “Sometimes you’ve just got to take that step back, have a winter time and come back. But I mean, if you watch him taking batting practice, he still drives the ball all over the place. He still has tremendous power. He’s a hitter. He did not have a good year offensively this year. But I think he’ll also have to come with some additional strike zone discipline [in 2023].”

Between 2017 and 2021, only Freddie Freeman had more doubles (219) than Castellanos (216) did. The Phillies need that hitter back in 2022. 2021 was a lost year, and by and large, Castellanos was given a pass from most of the fanbase. But if one disappointing season turns into the norm for Castellanos in Philly, playing 81 games a year at Citizens Bank Park likely won’t be very fun for him.

But Castellanos struggled quite a bit during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, his first with the Reds. He bounced back the next year and was one of the best hitters in the sport. If he’s able to repeat that in his second year with the Phillies, they may very well be able to compete for the NL East title.