PHILADELPHIA — Ten years into his baseball career, Nick Castellanos is the player he’s always going to be.
Occasionally brilliant, sometimes befuddling, a professional hitter and an unabashed swinger, he’s the guy who’ll stand before the media and define his approach in the box as “glorified batting practice” with nether a shred of shame nor of a shirt, as he did Tuesday night.
The challenge for the Phillies, manager Rob Thomson has long known, is not trying to turn Castellanos into a different hitter but harnessing what makes him unique.
And so you have the events of this summer around Citizens Bank Park Way, where Castellanos has been arguably the Phillies’ most consistent hitter for a stretch of nearly three months, fueled by personal dedication and Thomson’s lineup deployment. It’s a matter of maximizing strengths, a shared quest between player and coach that is bearing fruit.
Since May 28, when Castellanos’ average was mired at .199, he’s hit .286 with an .829 OPS, 12 homers and 49 RBIs in 77 games. He’s flourished in the heart of the lineup, an idea No. 5 hitter for Thomson, who has shuffled several guys through that spot.
It’s all about solving problems. Castellanos does that, most days, about five hours before first pitch, out on the field for extra batting practice, working soft toss or on the pitching machine. Thomson does it in his lineup construction, making sure the free-swinger is supported.
Castellanos rather eloquently explained why he’s been so good in the five-spot, after his three-run home run off Justin Verlander keyed a 5-0 win over Houston.
“It’s not important as a sense of like selfishness,” Castellanos said. “But knowing that my style of hitting, which is always like glorified batting practice, right? That I don’t really have an approach — I look for the baseball and hit it as hard as I can — having protection behind me usually forces the pitcher to throw to me more when there are people behind me. If I’m on, let’s say, the cliff of the lineup where the power starts to drop off, now the approach is, well, we don’t have to throw this guy a strike. That’s hard for me, because I don’t think I’ve ever gone to the plate looking to walk.”
Castellanos is — spoiler alert — swinging.
He’s third in baseball with a swing rate of 58.8 percent. That breaks down to 79.7 percent on pitches in the zone — fourth in baseball — and 38.2 percent on pitches out of the zone, his chase rate, which ranks sixth.
It doesn’t much matter then to Castellanos where pitches are, on balance. He’s swinging, so the incentive for pitchers to be in the zone is low. He’s in the fourth percentile in MLB in chase rate and 15th in whiff percentage, both actually improvements from last year.
Castellanos has seen 659 breaking balls this year, the most in baseball. Contrast that with 868 fastballs, 11th-fewest among qualified hitters.
Castellanos has hit .310 off fastballs each of the last two seasons after a reputation-making .371 in 2021.
It’s no secret as to why pitchers don’t want to throw him anything fast and straight. For all the practice against breaking balls, he’s only hitting .196 off of them in 2024, down from .259 last year and as high as .284 in 2018.
That makes the Verlander at-bat in the third inning all the more impressive. Castellanos took, one rarity, a first-pitch fastball, another, in the zone. He then barreled up a curveball that caught too much of the plate and ripped it 397 feet into the stands in left center.
“I had a pretty good idea I was going to see an off-speed pitch at some point in the at-bat,” Castellanos said of his former Tigers teammate and future Hall of Famer. “I saw that curveball pretty early and hit it well.”
Castellanos’ adjustments and consistency tie into what has defined his season. He was penciled into the lineup Wednesday for the 133rd time in 133 games. He’s articulated a goal to play 162, having last year tied a career-best of 157, set in 2017 and 2018 with Detroit.
It’s a measure of confidence from Thomson that Castellanos used as motivation, especially during a scuffling spring. And it’s a metric for how much Thomson believes in Castellanos’ work ethic, that he can work out of rough patches even without a day off.
“Tomper told me Opening Day after our batting practice just, ‘162?’ and I pointed back at him and nodded my head,” Castellanos said. “And then for me to get off to a slow start, and then for him to stick to his word, as a player, now I know where he’s at. From a coaching standpoint, trust is the biggest thing that you can have for your players.”
Castellanos has been streaky over his career. He may go through another rough patch this season. If he does, Thomson will respond by keeping him in there, as long as all that side work doesn’t lead to fatigue.
It’s the manager’s way of aligning team and personal goals.
“Just live clean, you know, prepare as best I can, and just suit up,” Castellanos said of the pursuit of 162. “That’s it.”
Contact Matthew De George at mdegeorge@delcotimes.com
Source: Berkshire mont
Be First to Comment