Castellanos, Phillies can only reflect on sudden failure, and move on
PHILADELPHIA — Outside of a singular home run in his first at bat in the National League Championship Series, something commonplace in Nick Castellanos’ postseason joyride with his Phillies teammates, the slugging right fielder hadn’t done much offensively.
Little matter, because Castellanos was still feeling as zoned in at the plate as he’s ever felt in his career, busily helping his team on what seemed so logically destined, a return trip to the World Series.
That fast, everything changed.
“I think I felt great until I went to Arizona,” Castellanos said in the quiet aftermath of a 4-2 Phillies loss to the Diamondbacks in Game 7 Tuesday night. “Then once I went to Arizona, I just felt like I was grinding to see the ball, see the pitches. Terrible, man. It’s a terrible feeling. To just feel like you’re locked in and be in a zone like that, and then have it fade away at the wrong time.”
The wrong time lasted for the rest of the series as the defending and presumed National League champions, who had outscored the D-backs 15-3 in those first two NLCS, went to Chase Field and flopped. They gave up late leads in Games 3 and 4, won Game 5 behind determined ace Zack Wheeler, and felt relieved that they were coming back home with a lead.
But all the while, Castellanos, this year’s steady power hitter and All-Star right fielder, kept flailing to regain what he had in the previous two postseason series (he’d hit four home runs over two games against the Braves in the NLDS) and most of the regular season. That feeling of effective power.
“Going back and looking at a lot of pitches they threw me, there was a lot of stuff on the edges — up, down, in, up, away. I have to give them credit as well,” he said. “But could I have been better? Absolutely. Could we have been better as a team? Absolutely. But we got beat, and it’s a humbling feeling, it’s a humbling game. And it sucks.”
Back for Game 6 Monday night at Citizens Bank Park, where so many victories played out so gloriously the past two postseasons, what was affecting Castellanos seemed to spread. Against Arizona’s top two starters who had been hit hard in the first two games, the Phillies lost 5-1 and 4-2 to put them in here, in this reflective clubhouse with players giving man-hugs while trying to shake away the shock.
Including that second-inning home run in Game 1, Castellanos would go 1-for-24 over seven games, a skid that wouldn’t have been unusual during the course of the 2022 season, his first with the Phillies. But that trouble fitting in had been in the past. This wasn’t him, not this year, not at this time.
“That’s Nick,” manager Rob Thomson countered. “He might strike out three times one day and hit two home runs the next. That’s who he is. It’s just more about staying back and trying not to do too much. It’s the same thing I say about him every day when he has a bad day. But he carried us there for a bit.”
Personal failure aside, of course, there were bigger regrets at play.
“It’s just because the potential of this team is so much greater than going home before a World Series,” he said. “You know, last year, when we lost Game 6 (of the World Series to Houston), obviously we were disappointed because we didn’t win the whole thing, but it was, ‘OK, now we can build off that.’ But knowing how we feel about this team, that we came up short from what we did the year previous, it’s a disgusting feeling, honestly.”
He knows it didn’t have to be this way. In the fourth inning of Game 7, Bryson Stott’s one-out RBI double had given the Phillies a 2-1 lead. J.T. Realmuto singled to left, but Stott was delayed leaving second for fear of the ball being caught, so he’d stop at third base. On came Castellanos with runners at the corners and the big inning that the Phillies had come to expect laid out right in front of him.
He took a ball from D-backs starter Brandon Pfaadt, then overswung and missed badly on three straight curveballs.
“I had a terrible at bat,” Castellanos said. “Me wanting too much to get the runner in, instead of just seeing what the pitcher was going to give me first. And that’s on me.”