The Phillies needed a bounce-back season from Nick Castellanos in 2023 before losing Rhys Hoskins to an ACL injury in spring training today. Now that we know Hoskins requires surgery for the injury, the Phillies need that bounce-back season from Castellanos even more.
After signing a 5-year, $100m contract with the Phillies last winter, big things were expected from Castellanos, who was coming off the first All-Star campaign of his career. In his final season in Cincinnati, Castellanos hit .309 with 34 home runs and 109 RBIs. The 34 home runs were a career-high, and the 109 RBIs and .309 average were the second-highest of his career. However, in his first year in Philadelphia, the home run total dropped to 13, the RBIs down to 62, and the average his worst in a full season since 2016.
In Castellanos’s career year with the Reds in 2021, his WAR was 3.2. Last year with the Phillies, it was 0.0. Then there was the clubhouse interview where Castellanos’s frustration was in clear view.
All in all, it wasn’t a good first year in Philly for Castellanos. Things didn’t get better in the post-season. He hit .185 without a home run and just 7 RBIs while striking out 18 times in 17 games. The Phillies were expecting more than that when they handed over the $100m contract to Castellanos a year ago – a lot more.
Now the Phillies have to replace 30 home runs and 79 RBIs and Rhys Hoskins’ 3.1 WAR, with it sounding likely he will be out for the season.
Castellanos talked this spring about how rough last year was for him and how it wasn’t very much fun even as the Phillies were winning, given how much he struggled throughout the year. Those frustrations led to Castellanos chasing many pitches and falling behind in counts before a lot of weak ground outs.
Castellanos hasn’t been hitting the seems off the ball this spring, but his plate discipline has been improved. He has eight walks in 53 plate appearances – the most he’s ever had in spring training in his career. He had 29 walks in all of 2022 in 553 plate appearances. He’s also gotten a hit in each of the last seven games.
Castellanos’s 34 home runs in 2021 were the only time in his career that he topped 30 home runs, so a return to that production might be wishful thinking, but from 2017-2019 he averaged 25.3 home runs a season before hitting 14 in just 60 games in 2020 and then the 34 in 2021. So doubling his 13 home runs from 2022 into the mid-20s doesn’t seem to be an unreasonable expectation for him this year. Now that Hoskins’s power in the middle of the lineup has been lost, the Phillies will need that to happen to make another deep playoff run.
With Hoskins out and Bryce Harper on the DL to start the year as he recovers from his shoulder surgery, Castellanos will have an even more prominent spot in the lineup. He hit 5th in the Phillies World Series game loss to Houston but might have moved down a bit in the order with the addition of Trea Turner. Could Castellanos move into Hoskins’ third spot ahead of JT Realmuto? It’s possible. If so, the Phillies need Castellanos to be more like the guy they handed out the $100m contract to, as opposed to the one they got in 2022.
