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The Phillies Essentially Replaced Nick Castellanos with Nick Castellanos at the Plate
By Matt Schultz
Published:
This Todd Zolecki tweet that went up before Monday’s Phillies game against the Padres has me feeling introspective:
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.
Matt Schultz is a comedy and sports writer from Philadelphia. He’s written extensively for ClickHole, The Onion, and Conan O’Brien’s Team Coco. His work has been featured in Vulture, Deadspin, The A.V. Club, Paste Magazine, and other publications. Much of his sports journalism can be found on college basketball websites that don’t exist anymore (PhilaHoops Heads rise up…)