Phillies

The Phillies Essentially Replaced Nick Castellanos with Nick Castellanos at the Plate

By Matt Schultz

Published: May 26th, 2026 · 11:19 AM EDT

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This Todd Zolecki tweet that went up before Monday’s Phillies game against the Padres has me feeling introspective:

The Phillies are paying Nick Castellanos about $19.2 million to play for the Padres. He's batting .190 with 4 home runs, 19 RBIs, .578 OPS and -0.8 WAR. They are paying Adolis García $10 million to be his replacement. He's batting .203 with 4 homers, 15 RBIs, a .607 OPS and -0.3… pic.twitter.com/32t7gAwHCb

— Todd Zolecki (@ToddZolecki) May 25, 2026

Not… great… Reading this while watching Casty and Adolis go a combined 0-for-7 at the plate was pretty rough. These two guys are, simply put, not very good right now. The Phillies swapped out bad for bad offensively and got a defensive upgrade in right field. What makes it worse, though, is how much money the Phillies are paying Casty. That part of the tweet made me gasp. I honestly forgot about that (out of sight, out of mind…), but damn… Spending $19.2 million on a bad player… who plays for another team… Extremely not good…

And if you’re gonna decide to cut a guy you still owe that much to, it’s fair to expect his replacement to be significantly better. It’s kind of funny how much that’s not the case here. The Phillies spent another $10 million this year to bring on pretty much the same guy:

Stat	Adolis García (PHI)	Nick Castellanos (SD)
G	53	36
PA	211	115
AB	185	109
H	37	20
2B	7	5
3B	1	0
HR	4	4
RBI	15	19
R	17	9
BB	19	5
K	64	32
BA	.200	.183
OBP	.284	.217
SLG	.314	.339
OPS	.598	.557

$29 million on the books this year for these two! Not good! There’s no way to sugarcoat it: Adolis being this bad offensively is an utter failure by Dave Dombrowski. I feel like Dombo still isn’t getting the heat he deserves. He botched the Casty situation so badly. Add it to the list of Dombrowski botch jobs. With Daryl Morey fired, maybe Philly fans will turn their general manager ire toward Dave. It’s his time. He’s not very good at what he does.