December 18, 2025
After inking free agent outfielder Adolis García earlier this week, Phillies President Dave Dombrowski commented on whether the team would be making more moves to upgrade its outfield.
“We’re basically pretty well set out there,” Dombrowski said. “We feel very good.”
The Phils' top executive spoke with media members about the likely outfield — which would place Garcia and a Brandon Marsh platoon in the corners with rookie-to-be Justin Crawford in centerfield every day. That's an interesting, but unproven, outfield. But it's also one that leaves a giant $20 million elephant in the room.
Reports surfaced shortly after the end of the regular season that the Phillies were planning to move on from Nick Castellanos before next season, despite him being under a healthy contract for 2026. Dombrowski didn't mention him as being in the plans for 2026.
Clearly, Philadelphia wants to trade him. Good luck with that.
"I've been trying to check around seeing if anyone was interested in Nick Castellanos," Phillies insider Todd Zolecki said on his podcast this week. "I couldn't find anybody, I've heard people say, 'I'm not interested at any price in Nick Castellanos.' They mention the defense is a big reason why."
Castellanos slashed .250/.294/.400 with 17 homers and 72 RBI last season but he became so much of a liability on defense he played sparingly in the fall, and clashed with manager Rob Thomson. Via Baseball Savant, Castellanos ranked as the 5th-worst of all 299 qualified outfielders in fielding run value (at -12).
The Phillies might not find a trade suitor any time soon. Which means they'll need to be patient, or they'll need to simply cut him and swallow the huge hit on their ledger — one that is likely to make them repeat luxury tax threshold offenders.
"Another person I talked to said if Nick is traded at all, it'll happen much later in the offseason, when every other option falls off the board," Zolecki added, "maybe the last team standing that still needs a right-handed bat might want to make a trade with the Phillies."
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