CLEARWATER, Fla. — Before the Phillies officially released Nick Castellanos, they had already assigned his No. 8 to Don Mattingly, the club’s new bench coach. It’s a bit of irony; Mattingly was hired this offseason to lend a fresh perspective in the dugout, and the Phillies are touting his borderline Hall of Fame playing career as something that will resonate with a veteran team.
He’s the type of coach that Castellanos — who chided manager Rob Thomson and other staffers for their lack of big-league playing experience, according to team sources — might have liked.
Castellanos is a free agent now. In releasing him Thursday, the Phillies decided to pay more than they ever have paid to make a player go away. He is owed $20 million in 2026. On top of a fractured relationship between Castellanos and the team, there were myriad baseball reasons for the transaction.
But this is the harsh reality: The Phillies will devote $30 million to right field between Castellanos and his replacement, Adolis García. One of those players had a .294 on-base percentage in 2025. The other had a .271 on-base percentage. The Phillies will pay the guy with the higher clip double the money to not play for them.
The news on Thursday was a formality; many of Castellanos’ teammates had known for months he would not return. Castellanos, in response to The Athletic’s reporting that had yet to be published, offered details of the night he carried a beer into the Phillies dugout during a June game against the Miami Marlins. Castellanos apologized, while noting that he had been instructed by Phillies management not to share details of the incident with reporters on the following day.
The letter in Castellanos’ Instagram post was not the talk of the room on Friday as the Phillies conducted another workout. But they had all read it.
“It is what it is, right?” Kyle Schwarber said.
The Phillies did not release Castellanos solely because of that incident in Miami. It was a microcosm, team sources said, of a larger falling out once Castellanos became a platoon player.
“I’m proud of him because he owned up to what he did,” Thomson said. “And we all make mistakes. Mine are well documented. Nick helped us out in a lot of ways here. He’s had some big hits and big plays and helped us win a lot of ball games. So I wish him all the best.”
Castellanos, in his letter, did not address larger questions about what many of his teammates perceived as disrespect directed toward them, Thomson and various coaches. Schwarber, the leader inside the Phillies’ clubhouse, was asked if Castellanos was a distraction last season.
“I mean, that’s (neither) here nor there,” Schwarber said. “I mean, we did what we did, right? I felt like in the (NLDS against the Los Angeles Dodgers), we played good games, right? There were just things that we didn’t execute and we didn’t walk away with wins at the end of the day. So it’s hard to say here or there, right? We put ourselves in the position where we wanted to be. And we just got knocked out. So I can’t really say.”
The Phillies are ready to move on without Castellanos.
“We all wish him the best, right?” Schwarber said. “We’ve had a lot of really good memories here over the last four years. And he’s had some really big moments with us. We wish him the best moving forward. It is what it is, but hopefully, wherever he goes next, he’s able to keep going out there and keep doing his thing. Keep having those big moments.”