Nick Castellanos' Padres Tenure Is Off To A Strong Start, Save For Some Bad Luck

[Randy Holt]

The San Diego Padres spent their weekend completing a four-game sweep of the Colorado Rockies, extending what has become a nice rebound from a sluggish start to the year. Unfortunately for Nick Castellanos, he was pinned down a bit from contributing to the repeated offensive outbursts from the collective. Not only from some general misfortune, but more specifically from Rockies outfielder Jordan Beck. 

Down early against Colorado on Saturday night, Castellanos put a ball into the air toward the right field seats. As it traveled and looked destined for his first home in a Padres uniform, Beck had other ideas: 

Not that it was a tank of a potential home run, mind you. Castellanos' exit velocity was 98.3 and the contact carried a .290 expected batting average. It would've been a homer in just one out of 30 major-league parks (Houston). The robbery component might've been overblown. But between that and each of the 91.6 MPH groundout with a .350 xBA and a 97.9 MPH line out with a .740 xBA that he also experienced over the weekend, there's a more general string of bad luck that he's running up against so far.

Many of Castellanos' underlying metrics look quite good:

The xBA alone is indicative of a player that should be seeing far better results than he has to this point. Castellanos has made good contact (as indicated by his Hard-Hit%) while avoiding groundball contact to an excessive 28.0 percent clip. Yet, this is a player who will carry a line of just .200/.263/.286 and a 54 wRC+ into the new week of games. 

Despite the hard luck associated with that kind of batting line, there are some positives to takeaway. Castellanos' strikeout rate (17.6 percent) and walk rate (8.8 percent) would each represent the best marks of his career. That hard contact rate is also significantly higher than it was last season by roughly 14 percent. These are all objectively good things that should likely be leading to better results than the ones Castellanos has received so far. If the discipline reigned itself in just a bit, he could take greater control over said outcomes. 

That's the one negative component we've seen out of Castellanos to this point in the young season. Even with a swing rate that is down a couple of percentage points and a chase rate that has remained within one percent of where it was last year, Castellanos has made less contact than last season by about three percent thus far. There isn't anything discernibly different in the types of pitches at which he's swinging, but merely his ability to make contact in and around the zone. Perhaps there's a susceptibility to swinging at less favorable pitches that has emerged given a small spike in his called strike rate (by about two percent), but we're still working within too small a sample to identify real trends there. 

The takeaway here is that Nick Castellanos has actually been varying shades of fine in 2026. The numbers say he should be quite a bit better, though, and if he's able to drive up the contact rate and create additional batted ball opportunities, his case looks to be one of those that is the natural ebb and flow of fortune in April of a new season.

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