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Marcus Hayes: The Phillies paid Nick Castellanos $100 million. He needs to step up (again) with Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber out.

Marcus Hayes, The Philadelphia Inquirer on

Published in Baseball

Harper and Schwarber were placed on the 10-day injured list on Friday. They are both over 30, and hamstrings and groins tend to be less resilient in their third decade. So do knees, as catcher J.T. Realmuto can attest; he’s still at least two weeks away from returning from his second surgery.

Furthermore, fifth starter Spencer Turnbull’s shoulder sent him to the sideline for a while, where he joins co-fifth starter Taijuan Walker, who has a finger boo-boo. So yeah, in a season full of good play and good news, the Phillies got a lot of bad of both Thursday night.

In his 2 1/2 seasons in Philadelphia, Castellanos has turned into the Phillies’ Ilya Bryzgalov, the free-agent goalie whose signing in 2011 spurred a decade of descent into irrelevance for the Flyers. Like Bryz, Casty was overpaid after modest success elsewhere. Like Bryz, he can be quirky, combative and surly. And, most important, like Bryz, he hasn’t come close to earning the money he was given.

Casty isn’t beloved in Philly, but Bryz was so despised he got bought out, because a goalie can’t hide like a baseball player can — even when that baseball player was supposed to be the cleanup hitter and protection for Harper. Since he landed in Philly, Castellanos hasn’t protected anything except his hair products.

Empty promise

In his six seasons before 2022, when he signed with the Phillies, Castellanos hit .286 with an .853 OPS and had 142 home runs, or one every 5.44 games.

 

He’s hit .258 with a .727 OPS and had 53 home runs, or one in every 7.04 games — a home-run production drop-off of 23%.

He’s been even worse in the playoffs for the Phils, hitting .196 with a .632 OPS and five homers in 30 games.

And this has been his worst season.

He recently went 8 for 17 over four games, and moved his average to .225, but has since gone 3 for 22. He has 15 multi-hit games ... and 33 hitless games.

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