The curious case of Nick Castellanos
“Need you to figure it out with the bat, not the Krylon.”
“You should paint a photo of an outside slider so you can see what it looks like and stop swinging at it.”
“Brave having your comments on.”
On Instagram this week, Philadelphia Phillies outfield Nick Castellanos posted a promotional video for Corona with Mero of Desus & Mero fame. (Editor's note: ?) Castellanos and Mero stood on a beach, talked shop, and graffitied a canvas. (Editor’s note: ???) Phillies fans roasted Castellanos in the comments because, up until then, he was batting below .200 on the season with zero extra base hits. He was the only qualified hitter in baseball without one.
Castellanos is notoriously streaky at the plate, and when he’s off he looks like a drunk uncle playing wiffle ball at a barbecue.
But that matters none to me. He is my favorite Phillie because he expresses himself honestly and it’s obvious when he’s comfortable or not, unlike the humanoids he plays with. They never heard a cliché or platitude they didn’t love. Here’s a sampling of my favorite Nick Castellanos moments since coming to Philly:
After struggling through much of his first season with the Phillies, he acknowledged the impact of family life on his play.
Typically a horrendous fielder, he made key defensive plays throughout the 2022 playoffs, then admitted that it’s hard for him to pay attention during the regular season.
In response to MLB dismissing the players’ criticisms of the new uniforms, he derided corporations that view the players as little more than dumb jocks.
He described baseball players as either milk or wine.
He listed baseball as his hobby in the team’s media guide.
He got off the schneid yesterday by hitting a triple. The ball bounced high off the right field wall at Citizens Bank Park, allowing Castellanos to lumber to third. The head-first slide into the bag was for show. He beamed, returned to his feet, then gestured toward his teammates. He followed that up with two singles, two RBI, and a walk. In a single game, his batting average jumped by almost thirty points, his OPS by almost a hundred.
It’s possible Castellanos is washed. It’s possible he becomes the best hitter on the planet over the next month. It’s certain he’s overpaid, and his defense remains awful. I don’t care. Most stats are boring. Castellanos is interesting.
Fans protest the Oakland A’s and the FTC should sue them
On Thursday, The Ringer published “When Fans Fight Back.” It’s an essential piece by Dan Moore about Oakland Athletics fans’ resistance to the team’s unscrupulous ownership and what that resistance means to the broader sports landscape. I won’t spoil the key points—seriously, if you exist somewhere in the Venn diagram of hating dynastic billionaires and liking sports, then it is a must read—but it inspired an addendum to my Toward a Better Baseball series, which focused on the impacts of MLB’s antitrust exemption.
What A’s owner John Fisher is getting away with—destroying baseball in Oakland, fleecing Las Vegas and Nevada taxpayers, and diminishing MLB’s game product—is enabled in large part by the league’s exemption from federal antitrust laws (although, all major sports leagues in the US operate like cartels, which Moore points out). MLB and its teams can basically do what they want, regardless of how it hurts fans (i.e. consumers). There is no legal recourse.
I view the demise of MLB’s antitrust exemption as a first step toward making baseball clubs more responsive to their fans and host cities. The problem is the Supreme Court has ruled that Congress is responsible for unwinding the exemption that the Court awarded to the league in 1922. Like many Court rulings, it makes no sense.
Several lawsuits over the decades have been designed to win the Court’s favor, but the exemption remains. The most recent threat fizzled when MLB settled a case just before the Supreme Court would determine whether to hear it or not. The terms of the settlement are confidential, but it is certain the litigants were paid a fortune to go away. It shows the fortress MLB has built around its antitrust exemption. If any stragglers get past the legal moat, then they will be mowed down by money.
It’s clear, then, that the litigant best positioned to end the antitrust exemption is the one that can’t be swayed by lump sum payments. That is the federal government. Under the Biden administration, the U.S. has been more pro-consumer and more anti-monopoly than it has in generations. The Federal Trade Commission has been suing tech monopolies like it’s their job, because it is. The FTC must also train its sights aon MLB.
To be sure, there are legal technicalities and nuances that would make this more difficult than I imagine, but the politics have shifted. Fandom is no longer a shield for the league, as A’s fans have shown. In this late stage of capitalism, us peons are savvy enough to differentiate between management and the team, and we are fed up with corporations crushing us with impunity. We see through owners’ relocation threats now. We are tired of them.
The A’s relocation debacle is not a result of special circumstances in Oakland. It is a result of inequitable and unequal political and financial systems that impact us all. What is happening in Oakland is possible anywhere. It’s time for our institutions to stop shrugging at us.