2022 was a year the Phillies and their fans will remember for a long time.
It was also a year Nick Castellanos would like to forget as quickly as humanly possible.
At least on a personal basis, that is. After signing a five-year, $100 million contract with the Phillies in March, Castellanos — one of two prized offseason additions, along with Kyle Schwarber — went on to post the worst full season of his Major League career.
His .694 OPS ranked 107th out of 130 qualified MLB hitters. His .389 slugging percentage was slightly better: 103rd. (Both stats were career-lows.) After hitting 34 homers in 2021, he hit 13 in 2022, in only two fewer games.
A 3-for-5, leather-flashing Game 1 of the NLDS seemed, for a fleeting moment, to flip the public Castellanos discourse on its head. Over three months removed, the .185/.232/.246 overall postseason slash line stands out a bit more.
The burden on Castellanos will not ease in 2023. In fact, despite the addition of Trea Turner, scrutiny may only increase without Bryce Harper’s bat in the middle of the lineup for at least the first couple months of the season.
For the Phillies to overcome it, they’ll need Castellanos to put his 2022 season in the rearview mirror. Speaking on SportsRadio 94 WIP on Thursday, Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski expressed confidence that his first $100 million signing in the club’s front office would do just that.
“I know last year was not a good year for Nick,” Dombrowski said. “He’s a much better hitter than that, and a much better player than that. So I think he’ll bounce back.
“He was one of the best hitters in baseball, really — he made the final three outfield spots for the All-Star [Game] in 2021. He’s a much better hitter than he showed last year. So I think he’ll bounce back.”
Dombrowski isn’t wrong: Castellanos was indeed one of baseball’s best hitters in 2021. His .938 OPS ranked sixth in MLB; his .576 slugging percentage fifth. The NL All-Star team’s starting right fielder hit one fewer home run (34) and compiled the same batting average (.309) as Harper, that season’s NL MVP.
That may have been a career year, but Castellanos had been a well above average hitter ever since he broke out with Detroit in 2016.
There are extraneous factors that may have contributed to Castellanos’ uncharacteristic season in 2022, as outlined by The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal after that NLDS Game 1. A caveat: Correlation shouldn’t be confused for direct causation — the following shouldn’t cause a player to spike his chase rate to 39.6%, a career-high and worse than 93% of MLB hitters — but they may help to at least partially explain some of Castellanos’ woes.
His free agency was expedited due to the owner-induced lockout; his Spring Training was subsequently rushed. He welcomed a son and went 3-for-4 on May 4, then got hit in the wrist on May 5. He was signed to hit — and to only hit; his defensive metrics are bottom-of-the-league — but various Harper injuries forced Castellanos into right field on a nearly everyday basis. After he finally started to show signs of heating up again in mid-to-late August, an oblique injury sidelined him for most of September.
Again — those events don’t singlehandedly give a player a 43.6% O-Swing percentage, second in all of MLB, behind only the notoriously free-swinging Javier Báez. The plan of attack for Castellanos all postseason was simple: first-pitch slider off the plate; 0-1 count.
No one but Castellanos himself can be sure which — if any — of those factors even affected him on the field during his down 2022 season, on a physical or mental level. But it feels safe to say they didn’t help his cause.
Perhaps 2023 is more of the same regardless. Perhaps Year 2, combined with better health, allows Castellanos to settle in and return to the offensive force he was before coming to Philadelphia.
Baseball Reference, for its part, predicts something in between those two poles, of course: The site projects Castellanos to slash .269/.321/.451 (a .772 OPS) with 20 homers in 2023. It still would be one of Castellanos’ less-productive campaigns, and it still would fall short of what the Phillies imagined when they signed him, but it would be a marked improvement over 2022.
“That’s very important for us,” Dombrowski said of a Castellanos reemergence. “We have a good team, with the capabilities of being a great team … Castellanos bouncing back could be an important part of that.”
The Phillies flourished in Harper’s two-month, one-day absence during the 2022 regular season, but its primary drivers were a burgeoning Day Care and a dominant-from-nowhere bullpen; Castellanos remained nowhere to be found.
2023 might be less forgiving. This time around, the Phillies’ ability to withstand Harper’s months-long absence might depend largely on whether Castellanos can return to the form that won him the 2021 Silver Slugger Award and earned him $100 million in the process — or, contrarily, whether the only bells Castellanos smashes are ones of alarm about the remainder of his Phillies tenure.
If Dombrowski’s bounceback forecast is accurate, though, the Phillies’ lineup can be one of baseball’s best — even before its greatest threat is a part of it.
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