Nick Castellanos enjoyed a relatively easy time from fans in Cincinnatti when he played for the Reds. For starters, he was playing a lot better for that team before the Phillies organization came calling for him to the tune of $100M over 5 years.
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For starters, he said when he signed, that ‘he is paid to hit baseballs.’ He’s done a little of that in Philadelphia this year but nothing like he displayed last season prior to coming here. There is a certain amount of slack the fans in Philly will allow a player to have but when he doesn’t show emotion when he strikes out, as he has been doing an awful amount of times at the plate recently, the fans can tend to get restless. They let Castellanos know that they don’t like what they are seeing from him. He has a slow swagger to the plate that may appear almost as Pat Burrell did, but Pat the Bat showed a lot more personality to the city and the fans.
Lets even look at the exchange between sports writer Jim Salisbury, when he asked Castellanos if he heard the boos on the field. Instead of expecting a question like this, it caught Nick off guard, like no one was supposed to ask that question to him. He recoiled with a smart answer, about his ‘lost his hearing’, then went right at Salisbury with the ‘stupid question’ reply.
Phillies fans will tell it like it is, and unfortunately, Castellanos has to learn this fast and do some things to get back into the good graces of the fanbase. Castellanos had some interesting remarks in the papers in Cincinnatti, saying ‘the MLB is probably cool with that because they are gearing everything towards gambling anyway’ in the reference to decades of Reds fans coming and going without too much positive results there in Cinncy.
And then there is ‘the house’ that he bought. It could be a jinx, because for some reason, Nick Castellanos purchased perhaps the most ridiculed professional athlete in years in Philadelphia, that, of course, is Ben Simmons. Could this jinx possibly haunting Castellanos with bad mojo with the fans?