Dave Dombrowski explains why Nick Castellanos resolution took so long: ‘It’s an obligation to do whatever we can’
The mechanism of Nick Castellanos’ departure from the Phillies came as no surprise. The timeline, that it got to this point this late, was slightly unexpected.
As late as Thursday morning, Castellanos was technically a member of the team. The Phillies tried all winter to trade Castellanos for even a couple million, or a few hundred thousand, dollars of salary relief. President of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski on Thursday admitted yet again what was already well-established public knowledge at that point. They failed, release was the only recourse, they took it.
It was not for lack of effort.
“We spent a prolonged time trying to make a trade,” Dombrowski told reporters, including Phillies Nation’s Destiny Lugardo, in Clearwater. “When I say that, trying to move his contract for minimum return from a dollar perspective and player perspective. Just hasn’t worked out, and at some point, you just have to say, ‘Well, this isn’t going to work.'”
The Phillies didn’t consider releasing Castellanos during the season, Dombrowski said, even after the June incident in Miami that seemed to accelerate the fracturing of his relationship with manager Rob Thomson and the rest of the club, and even when his role had diminished in the second half. Dombrowski said there was no specific incident that turned those relationships sour to the point of no return.
But he did say that there was some level of trade interest in Castellanos from early in the offseason throughout the winter. He said the Phillies set a higher price point early on in the negotiations, but even when that number dropped considerably, they couldn’t reach an agreement on a return — in terms of dollars or, he pointed out, players.
“There were times I thought we might make a trade,” Dombrowski said. “I know the dollars weren’t standing in the way at this point of clubs taking him. So really, if we ended up moving his contract even for minimum amount, it helps us from a (collective bargaining tax) perspective. That’s really why we kept trying to get this done. I think it’s an obligation to do whatever we can to try to get that done.”
There’s a narrative that the Phillies shot themselves in the foot by signaling so publicly that if they weren’t able to trade Castellanos, they’d release him. Why, the thinking goes, would a team give anything up if they knew they could just sign him for the league minimum afterward?
But it’s understandable why the Phillies hoped something could happen — and hence, why the process dragged out so long. For one, whatever Dombrowski, Thomson or anyone in the Phillies’ front office could have kept to themselves, the writing on the wall was painfully clear. Even though it was only a fraction of the issues, which The Athletic’s Matt Gelb published extensively in an excellent investigative piece on Thursday, Castellanos’ public spats with Thomson, along with the Phillies building their outfield without him and his sheer lack of production, made it obvious he was not part of their 2026 plan under any circumstances. Dombrowski could have told teams that Castellanos would be back if their asking price wasn’t met, and every executive in baseball would’ve called his bluff.
Plus, if there was a team out there that really wanted Castellanos for anything more than the league minimum, wouldn’t that team have paid an extra few hundred thousand dollars for exclusive rights to his services, rather than banking on winning an open, fixed-price competition with up to 28 other clubs as a free agent? Every offer to Castellanos will be for the league minimum, because a higher offer would not change his $20 million 2026 income, it would just subtract from the Phillies’ responsibility of that $20 million. So, Castellanos will essentially choose his favorite destination among the teams that offer him the league minimum salary, and teams cannot use dollars as a separator. That’s not a reliable fallback plan.
The reason it dragged out this long is not that the Phillies gave up their leverage. It’s that they never had any to begin with, and there was no way for them to recover any of it.
“You always wish that things end up on a good point, a la Ranger Suárez when he’s leaving and he’s pitching very well,” Dombrowski said. “But it doesn’t always happen.”