Miami native Nick Castellanos was heavily linked to the Marlins when he was a free agent during the 2021-22 offseason, and Castellanos told The Athletic’s Matt Gelb earlier this week that he very nearly agreed to join the team before the lockout halted winter business in early December 2021. “If I wasn’t advised to be patient and wait until after the lockout to sign, I would have been over there,” Castellanos said. Instead, the Marlins’ plans changed during the freeze, with some reports tying Derek Jeter’s departure as club CEO to ownership’s decision to not expand the payroll quite so much once the lockout was settled. That meant Castellanos was now without his top suitor, until he signed with the Phillies for a five-year, $100MM deal.
Castellanos admitted that it took a while to get over the disappointment of not playing in his hometown, a “dream” scenario that would’ve allowed Castellanos to be near his son Liam at all times, and play for one of his baseball heroes in Jeter. This feeling may have contributed to Castellanos’ lackluster numbers for much of the 2022 season, but the Phillies’ run to the World Series reinvigorated him and the outfielder delivered a more productive season this year. “I can never sit and say I am unfortunate because I’m blessed and I get to play here,” he said. “I get to play for a great organization. I get to play with one of the most intense fan bases in the sports world. I have so much gratitude for all of that.”
More from around the NL East…
- The Marlins figure to be looking for catching upgrades this winter, as Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald looks at the free agent market to see what options the Fish might prefer to the Jacob Stallings/Nick Fortes combo. Jackson also feels the Marlins could consider trading prospects for a veteran backstop, but moving a proven pitcher “would be unwise” in Jackson’s view, due to Miami’s own concerns about its rotation depth. The Marlins got a combined -0.6 bWAR from their catchers in 2023, ranking 28th of 30 teams in catcher bWAR.
- The Nationals have continued to overhaul their front office and minor league staff personnel this week, most prominently parting ways with director of player development De Jon Watson, the Washington Post’s Andrew Golden (X links) reports. Watson has been the farm director for the last two seasons and a member of the Nationals’ organization since 2017. Before coming to D.C., Watson was an assistant GM with the Dodgers and the Diamondbacks’ senior VP of baseball operations, among other roles with Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Miami during a long career in scouting and player development roles. The Nats also made eight changes to their minor league coaching and coordinator ranks, with a particular focus on improving offensive development.
Bbc
The channel or the (bleep)?
Why not both? Have you heard the BBC news intro? It definitely fuggs
Marlins hate defense
And some days they hate both. Stallings and Wendle contributed on those days…on both ends.
you hear of guys who can hit and can’t field being the type of guys that keep both teams in the game. Stallings and Wendle got it wrong because they kept the other team in the game…no matter what.
Castellanos has been worth a whopping 1.6 wins since he signed, and he’s still owed another $60 million over the next three years. At least Jeter managed to splurge a little and sign Avisail Garcia to an albatross contract?
Yeah… Jeter wasn’t the brightest executive. Yankees fans, you’re more than welcomed to have him as your next GM. You’ll be begging and screaming for Cashman to come back.
@Big Smoke
Yankees fans have got a great reason to love Jeter’s GM style. Remember, he gifted them Stanton.
Best move ever…for the Marlins!
No the best thing Jeter did was hire your “savior” Kim Ng. Without Jeter she isn’t there. Castellanos would have been a nice addition to that lineup. He’s not much of an outfielder but he’s in there everyday grinding and he rakes. He would have fit in with the personality the team has. And I hope they don’t trade any of that young pitching they have. Doesn’t make sense. But Jeter wasn’t all bad in Florida.
I won’t really bash Jeter like other Marlins fans do. His regime absolutely owned the Yankees in that Stanton deal. Made his former team into compete suckers on that trade.
Also, I like the campaign he led to hear from fans. While the world hasn’t been saved from it, it led to some changes at the park, and you can see they listened to fans in the rebrand under him to where the current branding fits a combination of the original Florida Marlins branding combined with the Loria nightmare Art Deco branding.
I also enjoyed the work that Jeter (and Michael Jordan behind the scenes) did with trying to get a certain type of culture here, even having moments in the early stages reaching out to the Miami Heat about the Heat Culture that Pat Riley built.
And Ng is a wait-and-see thing. She did some ups and downs previously, but she came through at this year’s trade deadline, so she’s on the plus side for now.
As for Castellanos, he would have fit well, and wouldn’t have needed to play the OF. With him, we wouldn’t have signed Soler or Garcia, which would’ve eventually moved Castellanos permanently to the DH role with De La Cruz and Sanchez manning the corners. Would’ve been a nice fit.
Nick Castellanos has contributed significantly in 13 playoff wins (of the 19 playoff games played) since signing with the Phillies. It looks as though things have worked out okay for both Castellanos and the Phillies.
Maybe the Dodgers can help the Marlins catching. Marlins get Diego Cartaya or Hunter Feduccia & either Andy Pages or Jose Ramos. Dodgers get pitcher Jesus Luzardo.
Lol. Best fire up The Show on your Xbox of u want to see that trade go down.
Why do some of these posters have no shame to show how stupid they are?
So the Marlins have built their team up, and now every idiot out there i thinking they’ll trade their young pitchers away to improve their teams.
Let me count this now
Luzardo to the Dodgers for Diego Cartaya or Hunter Feduccia & either Andy Pages or Jose Ramos.
Braxton Garrett to the Mets for Jeff McNeil.
Yeah, the Marlins are clearly in the business of being stupid. I know that Kim Ng ain’t no genius, but she ain’t Mike Hill. Stop with the stupid trade suggestions!
Wait, is that a real trade suggestion someone made?
Soon to be 32 year old McNeil making anywhere from 10-15mil/year until hes 35 for Garrett who will be 26 next year and not even arbitration eligible until 2025?
@cuban1
Yes, one of the Mets fans suggested it in a discussion. lol!
I’d be happy with bringing in McNeil, but not for anything close to Garrett. I wouldn’t even give Rogers for McNeil.
Gonna cost more then that for Luzardo.
Nicky C has 0 errors this year. He’s the only everyday position player to have no errors.
They don’t give an error if the player doesn’t get to the ball.
Miami native Nick Castellanos’ 2023 fielding—
Fangraphs -15.9
Baseball Reference -1.4 dWAR
Negative is bad.
Defensive metrics are severely flawed. What determines a negative dWar when a player has 0 errors? I’m not saying Castellanos is a great defender, he clearly isn’t, but he’s not a liability out there as these stats would have you believe.
I don’t know that they are flawed but they are certainly (and easily) misunderstood. It’s -1.4 dWAR compared to the average fielder in MLB in 2023. There’s positional adjustment baked in. That means an OF is less valuable than a SS.
Read this post (the first marked answer) on stackexchange for a detailed explanation on how dWAR is calculated—
sports.stackexchange.com/questions/11877/baseball-…
Von, you or I could stand out there and record zero errors if we didn’t get to any balls. Fielding percentage is severely flawed because you only get an error if you misplay a ball.
Defensive WAR evaluates speed, route taken to the ball, arm strength and accuracy, and probably a few other things that aren’t immediately coming to mind. WAR certainly is not a perfect stat, but I will take it or any of the other advanced defensive evaluation metrics over counting a player’s errors.
I understand that, but he caught plenty of balls and made several decent plays. His range is still not great, but having watched him all year, I would not categorize him as a bad defender.
“This feeling may have contributed to Castellanos’ lackluster numbers for much of the 2022 season“ –
feelings cannot be put into analytics, so this can’t possibly be true.
Analytics folks will blame “luck” for the downturn and cite Nick’s .309 BABIP in 2021 vs .263 in 2022. It could not possibly be that Nick’s feelings/emotions didn’t allow him to play his best.
>> This feeling may have contributed
> feelings cannot be
I felt what you were feeling about the author’s feelings about how Nick felt.
@Hemlock
Someone was definitely feeling something.
Don’t make me contact HR!
I’m pretty sure Harold Reynolds has no problem with this conversation.
“What’s this? You’re looking for some hands-on management experience?”
—Terdema Ussery
I don’t know of a single analytics person who doesn’t admit some things aren’t measurable. But if this gives you a reason to rant on analytics, enjoy yourself.
Hey gbs42, do those same MLB analytics folks and GM’s acknowledge that to managers and allow managers to make game decisions based on the real game day mental state of ball players?
Play a guy who’s locked in mentally and hammering the ball in BP over the better analytical choice who may not be all there on a given day?
The amount of data available for todays game is awesome, and using it wins games, but, just an opinion, balancing analytics with what can’t be measured will win more games.
> with what can’t be measured
Wampum—
There may not be widely-available ways for the public to measure such things due to HIPAA laws but it doesn’t mean that progressive teams cannot measure it, either.
@WampumWalloper
How dare you think that the human element has anything to do with playing sports! Did you not know that baseball is played by robot created by XBox, Playstation, and the analytics deities (database management clerks)?
Nick is a big reason for the Phillies success this year. His bat returned to produce numbers that were more in line with his career norms. He played a decent RF and showed off a pretty good arm.
Like a lot of power hitters, he can look overmatched at the plate on occasion and is open to those dreaded two-week slumps. But all in all, he’s earning that $20 million per year.
Phillies vs. Braves: Phillies win again in four! We got their number!
I doubt very much his off season in 2022 had anything to do with not playing in Miami. Nick C is a professional. He just had an offseason, maybe trying to hard to please his new teammates and fanbase. And his son Liam spent a lot of time around the team this year.
New team, big expectactions, at times a rough atmosphere, not being around your son as much, I can see how that would be a lot. Nick has a great bat. He’s a doubles hitter who put A LOT of games away this year. He also is a big reason this team finally solved the Marlins, who had given the Phillies fits for years.
In terms of his defense, yes, he has negative UZR and dWAR. It’s mainly due to his lack of range. He at least adequately fields whatever comes his way, so that’s not nothing in terms of defensive value. Schwarber he is not when it comes to the glove. It also helps that he has one of the best defensive CFs in the game in Rojas flanking him. So that arrangement works out just fine.
Those defensive stats are bullocks. Nicky’s range isn’t great, but he has 0 errors and plays the ball off the wall rather well. Again, his range is an issue, but glancing over those stats, you’d assume he’s terrible out there, and that isn’t the case at all. I really think defensive metrics are not reliable at all.
Mark, get out of your feelings. The man made 20M and wasn’t even forced.