The San Diego Padres just signed a problem child with a power bat, and outfielder Nick Castellanos is going to be a handful for rookie manager Craig Stammen. Matt Gelb of The Athletic did an extended breakdown of the Castellanos’ issues with the Phillies, and some of what he said provided some clues about what to watch for with the outfielder.
Start with the respect factor. That’s huge with Castellanos, and it goes far beyond the incident when he was lifted for a defensive replacement in a game in which his friends and family were in the stands.
“The only opinions that I honestly care about are (from) the ones that have carried the stick,” Castellanos said when he appeared on the podcast of Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Mookie Betts. “The ones that have put on the gloves and put on the cleats.”
Neither of those applied to Phillies manager Rob Thomson, which was apparently a big deal. Translate that to the Padres, and it indicates that Castellanos wouldn’t have done well with former manager Mike Shildt, but at least new manager Craig Stammen has been on the field as a reliever.
Another quote that stuck out was something Castellanos said back during the 2022 playoffs, according to Gelb. Most veteran players learn to have short memories when it comes to their reactions to incidents like the one with Thomson, but apparently Castellanos isn’t one of those guys.
“I will say, I’m somebody who doesn’t forget anything,” Castellanos said during the 2022 playoffs. “I’m also somebody who takes everything personally.”
That’s also called being thin-skinned, and it’s another serious issue given the length of the baseball season. Feathers will get ruffled over the course of 162 games in all kinds of ways, and it’s hard to imagine it not coming to a head at some point soon in San Diego.
The reaction of some of Castellanos’ former Phillies teammates is telling, too. Gelb spoke to over a dozen of them off the record, which gave them the ability to be candid in their assessment of what went wrong.
The consensus was that Castellanos wasn’t a bad teammate, but he wasn’t necessarily a team player. The incident that was mentioned most frequently in this regard was his blowup with Thomson, which one Phillies player summarized as as follows.
“You can’t disrespect the manager and talk to him the way he did,” one Phillies player said. “You can’t expect it all to be the same after that.”
It will be interesting to see how that goes with Stammen, especially since Castellanos didn’t take it well when he thought other players were being given luxuries he didn’t get. Given the stars the Padres have, that seems like a problem waiting to happen. This is likely Castellanos’ last stop if he can’t fit in, though, and the Phillies eventually reached the point where they were willing to pay him to go away and play elsewhere.