Castellanos to Cincy
The Cincinnati Reds capped off their strong offseason with another big move, announcing the addition of Nicholas Castellanos on a 4-year, $64 million dollar deal (which includes opt outs after 2020 and 2021). Castellanos has been a solid above average hitter the last several years, but then stepped up a notch when joining the Cubs down the stretch in 2019. After posting a 105 wRC+ in 439 PA with Detroit, he was traded over at the deadline and posted an explosive 154 mark in 225 PA.
In joining Cincinnati, Castellanos now has the best home ballpark of his career, as Great American Ballpark is routinely a top 10 park in homers, though I’ll quickly point out that Comerica Park isn’t nearly as bad for hitters as it’s perceived. If he can log his fourth straight season of at least 150 games, we might finally see the elusive 30-homer season after 26, 23, and 27 the last three seasons. He should regularly bat 4th or 5th for the Reds so he could get his second 100-RBI season, too.
While this move gives the Reds incredible outfield depth, it muddies the water on fantasy outlook of those involved, namely Jesse Winker, Nick Senzel, and Aristides Aquino. I don’t think they brought in Castellanos to platoon while another recent acquisition – Shogo Akiyama – is their best centerfield option. This move could indicate some skepticism about the reliability of Winker and Senzel given their health record or Aquino given that he has just 226 major league plate appearances under his belt. Orrr if you want to look at it more positively, perhaps they’re stocking up for a trade.
Let’s look at the early draft market on this set since the New Year:
- Castellanos – 117th overall
- Aquino – 169th
- Senzel – 207th
- Winker – 315th
Unsurprisingly, Winker comes in last as he adds a nasty platoon split to his injury history when it comes to negative marks. He has just 147 PA against lefties, but the .543 OPS marks a 364-point split compared to his work against righties. Aquino and Senzel have seen their prices dip since drafts started back in November, both dropping about 20 points overall.
Castellanos feels light at this price. Now, he will go up as every big-time free agent sees a boost once they land, but I wonder if he’ll go up enough. That current price puts him as the 33rd OF off the board and if he jumps 15-20 spots, he’ll be around the 27th at that point.
I think I’d jump him over Eddie Rosario for sure and then get him the cluster with Joey Gallo, Jeff McNeil, and Jorge Soler. That’d put him in the top 25, which feels right and it’s probably the highest he can go because the next group up includes guys who can hit similarly and steal bases. Steamer has him 24th, right around Gallo, Soler, and Max Kepler.
If Casty hits this range, who are you preferring?
I’d list them as Gallo, McNeil (because of the eligibility), Rosario, Casty, Soler.
i like that order, might swap rosario and mcneil. Idk why eddie is so low ADP wise, he’s been a solid bat for a few years now.
Seems like Castellanos should be ranked last in this group for fantasy purposes. Great new home park but his splits last year vs RHP:
.272/.318/.405 — and worse than that in his career
He is perhaps an overpaid short-side platoon bat being put into an everyday role when he should sit vs some righties.
.272/.318/.485, not .405.
He definitely has some platoon splits but they’re more like “OK against righties, beats up lefties”, not “they should platoon him”.
I copied the triple slash from another article and it was incorrect. I agree with your assessment
I don’t really agree. First off, we’ll see how he hits righties in the nicer park, but even if he’s “just” his career .768 against them, that’s more than playable every day. There’s reason to believe he’ll be better, though, as he’s been north of .800 in 3 of the last 4 years. I also think the .405 was a typo, I’m seeing .485 on the SLG.
Yep, agree. 800 OPS is not bad vs RHP. I still wish the Reds had not signed him – though for fantasy purposes, it’s a great spot. If he had ended up in a bad home park for right-handed power, I would have been fading him.
Castellanos as a Tiger had 44 career HR at home and 60 on the road in 3,421 PA. (he split home/road 8 and 8 as a Cub last year by my count). That’s a pretty lopsided split. Comerica is 420 to center with a straight fence that makes it slightly longer to just left or right of dead center. It has an 11 foot fence in right center. It’s also a healthy 345 down the LF line. I know that the park factors say Comerica is pretty neutral for HR for RH hitters but I’m not buying it for Castellanos. I suspect that Castellanos loses a lot of HR to centerfield and the gaps which is why he hits so, so, so many 2B and even 3B even though he’s not particularly fast (though to be fair, he’s not exactly slow either by Baseball Savant’s sprint speed). Since 2016 Castellanos is 11th in 3B with 22, as many as Whit Merrifield and 4 more than Trevor Story who has good speed and plays in a strong 3B park at Coors. Since 2016 he’s 4th in 2B and again, it’s not like he’s just legging out bunches and bunches of those. That’s a lot of balls off the wall that are HR somewhere else.
Looking at Baseball Savant (which has no park adjustment), he’s underpeformed his x-stats there every single year. Just looking at his SLG (year/SLG/xSLG):
2015 .419 SLG, .439 xSLG
2016 .496 .583
2017 .490 .546
2018 .500 .530
2019 .525 .547
I don’t have the tools to figure out whether this is a high or low % but he only had 27 HR last year on 53 barrels. Put it this way – in 2019 he was 16th in baseball in barrels and 62nd in HR. In 2018 he was 15th in barrels and 49th in HR. And it’s not like it’s some goofy launch angle thing, his LA in 2018 was 15.2 and in 2019 13.9, both of which are perfectly reasonable numbers and you can find tons of examples of guys with similar launch angles hitting many more HR.
(Just for fun, Arenado hit 41 HR last year on only 40 barrels. Example #9,427 of how Coors is another world)
Sorry, but he’s getting hurt by Comerica, I just don’t see where there’s really much of a question about it. Comerica turns a not insignificant number of HR into 2B and 3B for him (and certainly some outs as well).
I’m all in on him for 2020. . . .
Just to add on – Castellanos’ actual SLG the last 4 years is .504 which ranks 35th over that time using FG leaderboards. His xSLG the last 4 years is .549 (I weighted it since he had fewer PA in 2016 but unweighted it’s not much different at .552) which would tie him for 8th over the last 4 years with Freddie Freeman. Over those 4 years Castellanos has 94 HR. The fewest HR by anyone with a SLG over .530 is 110 (excluding Soto and Acuna who have played a lot less than the rest of those guys). Throw out Judge (barely played in 2016 and has missed time) and Bellinger (didn’t play at all in 2016) and the fewest is 115 by Donaldson (who also missed some time).
Basically Castellanos has been losing about 5-10 HR per season just because of his home ballpark. No, that isn’t going to make him into a 40+ HR league leader or anything, but if he’s a guy who’s going to suddenly go .300/32/100/100, hey, sign me up.
Saw something on twitter that he basically had the most barrel outs in 2019, and in 2018, and in 2017.
Absolutely would not surprise me. I was going to look up how many 400+ foot outs he made last year but I spent more time on the above posts than is reasonable already 🙂
(All of the following assumes I used Savant’s search engine correctly)
OK, I had to look it up and this looks like it is true. Castellanos had 20 barrels last year that went for outs. 2nd most was Abreu with 19. Betts with 18 and Freeman and Belt with 15 were the only other guys with 15+.
He had 4 outs on balls hit more than 400 feet. That tied Arenado (Coors, which is huge), Hunter Dozier, Avisail Garcia, and Brandon Dixon (another Tiger) for the most last year. Nobody had 3 , 17 guys had 2 and 77 guys had 1. That makes a total of 121 outs of more than 400 ft. A full 28 of those 400 foot outs were in Comerica. You hit it 400 feet and you generally get rewarded but not always at Comerica.
There were only six 420 foot outs last year – 3 at Coors, 2 at Comerica and 1 at Fenway. The longest out last year was by Brandon Drury who hit one 427 feet that went for an out. It was in a road game . . . . at Detroit.
The league leader in barreled outs has been a Tiger every year of the Statcast era:
2015 JD Martinez with 19
2016 MIggy with 19 (VMart with 15. Castellanos with 13 and JD Martinez with 11)
2017 Castellanos with 17 (Miggy with 16)
2018 Castellanos with 17
2019 Castellanos with 20
No Cincinnati Red has had more than 9 in the Statcast era (Votto 2016, Duvall and Schebler 2018)
Terrific work Anon. Thanks for the deep dive
I can imagine Gallo possibly hitting .208 and cannot picture McNeil doing that. I have them ranked as McNeil, Soler, Casty, Rosario, and Gallo.
McNeil is bounds ahead on contact, but Gallo, given a whole year, could plausibly hit 60 homeruns
at an ADP of ~90, ill roll the dice on gallo in a shallow league all day
Gallo hit .253 last year, so basically anything can happen. Steamer likes his changes and sees him as a .230 hitter.
Gallo is an extreme FB hitter with a career 38.0% K rate who is moving into what should be a more pitcher friendly home ballpark. His .253 last year was bouyed by a .368 BABIP which is unlikely to happen again (Savant thinks he deserved .229 last year). In 2015 at AAA he hit .195 in 228 PA.
Basically he MUST hit 40+ HR to be useful. He’s much too young to predict a collapse, but it’s scary that his profile is exactly like Chris Davis’. The one advantage he has over Davis is athleticism – Davis was a mediocre 1B and a train wreck everywhere else. Gallo is athletic enough to fake it in CF and is a solid corner OF. He seems like a solid bet to age better than Davis.
Might be no more risk/reward guy in the fantasy baseball than Gallo IMO
Any chance Castellanos gets time at 1B vs LHP?
Votto OPS+ vs LHP
2018: 105
2019: 86
Votto age-36 and Castellanos actually hits LHP better than RHP. Senzel probably does too, and Aquino shows no bias (Winker almost certainly is a sit vs LHP).
I don’t think Castellanos has played 1B at any level, but he came up as 3B so transition should be easier than a straight-OF’s transition.
Votto short DL-stint each of last two years. To try to avoid another one , sit him against most lefties and see what happens? It is the NL, so he’s also one hell of a PH option.
Face of the franchise and 4 more years on his deal? Going to be a tough sell to tell Votto he’s a platoon guy at this point unless he collapses further.
I think they just need to stick Castellanos out there in RF and leave him be. He was a 3B coming through the minors but then they moved him to corner OF his last year and a half in the minors in 2012-2013. Then they moved him to 3B in the majors for a few years. Then they moved him back to corner OF. He showed some progress last year, I say give him a shot at one position.
Besides 1B is incredibly hard 🙂
With McNeil a lot depends on whether how bouncy the ball is and how that affects his power. Even though he doesn’t walk much he is going to hit for average but was his 23 homers a bouncy ball thing? He did increase his pull rate to 46% and his launch angle is nice at 13-14 degrees but there isn’t a lot
of raw power (107 max).
Now with his amount Of contact, decent LA and now also a bit more pulling power could play up but not sure it is 20+ again. Would of course be extremely nice if he was like Murphy who was another late bloomer who suddenly added power and became a .320 hitter with mid 20s bombs for a couple years but I think peak Murphy had more raw pop.
But mcneil also did show some pop in the minors so maybe he can stay like at 18-20 homers with a 300+ avg? That would be nice although he had some injury issues too which could be a concern.
won’t someone think of the defenseeeeeee