In a recent evaluation of some of the worst contracts around Major League Baseball, a pair of Philadelphia Phillies notably but unsurprisingly found their names on the (dis)honor roll: right fielder Nick Castellanos and pitcher Taijuan Walker. And while the Phillies deserve some credit that other big expenditures (Aaron Nola, Trea Turner, etc.) are not considered "bad" contracts, it's worth looking into the details surrounding both Casty and Walker to see just why they're so undesirable.
Phillies Nick Castellanos and Taijuan Walker are unsurprisingly considered to have two of the worst contracts in MLB
For Castellanos, it's been a roller coaster ride over three seasons in Philadelphia. The good: He played the full 162 for the Phillies this year and has managed to appear in 455 of a possible 486 games. He has bopped 65 regular season homers in Phillies pinstripes, and he managed a 100 RBI All-Star season in 2023. And he's had some unreal hot streaks along the way, most notably during the 2023 NLDS when he homered four times to sink the Braves. It has all come at a cost, however.
Castellanos has not been close to deserving of the five-year, $100 million deal the Phillies handed him following his career-best 2021 campaign in Cincinnati. Advanced metrics tell us that his hard hit rate and line drive rate are down over his Phillies career compared with the seasons immediately preceding it, and the simple eye test reveals to anyone who has watched him at all how he frequently looks overmatched or extremely uncompetitive in his at-bats. He will occasionally run into a fastball and crush it, and he sprays enough other hits to maintain a semi-respectable batting average, but it's nothing you can get too excited about.
You'd probably find it hard to believe that this is the same player who once led the AL in triples one year and then led all of Major League Baseball in doubles the following year, but it's the truth. Meanwhile, his defense is a glaring liability, and it figures to get even worse as he ages over the remainder of the contract. Amazingly, Castellanos has made only three errors in over 3,600 innings in the field with the Phillies. But then again, you can't make an error if you can't get to balls. It's no wonder that Castellanos, who has been appropriately called "polarizing" by many, is a prime candidate to be traded this offseason if the Phillies can find a dance partner for him.
There is a Phillies player on this list and it’s not Taijuan Walker 🤔 https://t.co/2EAE7KKU4r
— Phillies Tailgate (@PhilsTailgate) December 2, 2024
And then there's Taijuan Walker, he of a 5.44 ERA across 50 games pitched (46 starts) as a Phil. He somehow managed to win a career-high 15 games in 2023 despite a middling ERA, but 2024 was an unmitigated disaster and he was unusable.
Walker has been a complete afterthought come playoff time each of the last two seasons, as he hasn't even come close to being considered for postseason action. Not the kind of return on investment the Phillies envisioned when they forked over a four-year, $72 million contract for his services just two years ago.
Will the Phillies simply cut ties with Walker and eat the remaining two years of his contract? They may have to, unless they can find a taker for his services while still paying a large chunk of his salary to make him go away. Regardless of the disposal method, however, it's clear that nobody has any hope for him to rebound in a Phils uniform, and Walker has already cemented himself as one of the main punching bags of this era of Phillies baseball.
If there is a silver lining to be had for the Phillies, it's that both Castellanos and Walker are lumped into the "All the bad contracts with 2 years remaining" group of the Bleacher Report list, so there is a light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. They won't be weighing the Phillies down through the end of the decade like some of the other clunkers on the list.
Of course, the top name mentioned during any discussions about albatross contracts is Mike Trout, so you'd really have to think long and hard about whether the Phillies should ever attempt the long-awaited union with the South Jersey native and noted Eagles fan. For the Phillies or any team to take that kind of risk would require a lot of salary retention to make such a thing remotely palatable.
Then again, it would probably be best to steer clear of contracts like Trout entirely, because you don't want to find yourself mentioned on a list like "worst contracts" all too often. For the Phillies' sake, they'll hopefully be noticeably absent from such compilations once the contracts for Castellanos and Walker expire.