The San Diego Padres finally added a bat, and as usual, controversial GM A.J. Preller is swinging for the fences with this move, both literally and figuratively. The Padres have signed problematic outfielder Nick Castellanos, who was released by the Philadelphia Phillies after the outfielder’s latest journey into the world of questionable discipline-worthy conduct that was so far beyond the pale that the Phillies basically don’t want him around.
There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s dig in and go there. We’ll start with the good news—the 33-year old Castellanos can hit. He has a total of 250 career home runs during his MLB career, including 17 last season with the Phillies and 23 and 29 homers, respectively, in the two seasons before that.
He also comes cheap. The Phillies owe the Phillies $20 million this year, and they’ll pay nearly all of that, minus the veteran minimum of $780K the Padres will shell out.
But Castellanos could easily become a major headache for new rookie manager Craig Stammen. Castellanos is a terrible defensive outfielder by every major metric, but he’s the only one who seems to be unaware of that. He made what Phils manager Rob Thomson described as “an inappropriate comment,” according to an ESPN story, after being pulled from a game for a defensive replacement in Miami last season.
The outfielder responded by saying that his communication with Thomson had been “questionable, at least in my experience,” back in September. He was also benched, and last Thursday, Castellanos posted a handwritten note on social media that explained the incident that preceded his benching, saying that he brought beer into the dugout after being taken out of a game and complained to Thomson about team rules. The outfielder also said teammates took the beer away before he drank any.
"After being taken out of a close ball game in front of my friends and family, I brought a Presidente into the dugout," Castellanos wrote. "I then sat right next to Rob and let him know that too much slack in some areas and too tight of restrictions in others was not conducive to us winning."
This didn’t prevent the Phillies from winning the NL East, although they didn’t get as far as they wanted to in the playoffs. Castellanos said he went into the office of “Presidente” Dave Dombrowski (i.e., president of baseball operations) and they aired out their differences, with the outfielder apologizing for “letting my emotions get the best of me.”
The Phillies wanted to work all this out before the start of spring training, but apparently that didn’t go well, so they released him. Castellanos is now the Padres’ problem, and they’ll probably try him at first base, which is where he's been working out, knowing that he could be a huge issue for Stammen.
Technically this move is risk-free, and it does add some spice to the Padres spring training, which has been fairly bland so far as pitchers and catchers reported this week. The offensive upside is certainly there, but it remains to be seen whether Castellanos will even make it through spring training given his recent history.