With a free agent market flooded by outfielders, could Nicholas Castellanos be a potential offseason target for the Yankees?
With the injury news of Aaron Hicks undergoing Tommy John surgery, the Yankees are again going to need some depth in the outfield. The outfielders the Yankees have right now are Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Mike Tauchman, and Clint Frazier. There are a lot of outfielder free agents this year, but one stands out more than the others: Nicholas Castellanos. Here are two reasons why the Yankees need to sign Nicholas Castellanos.
Castellanos is A Hitting Machine
Nicholas Castellanos has pretty much been a hitting machine his entire career, but he was often overlooked in the early stages of his career as he was on Tiger teams when they had Migue; Cabrera and JD Martinez. but this year he really put his name out there for all baseball fans. His 2019 was split with 2 teams as he was traded to the Chicago Cubs at the deadline. Here are his season totals and splits:
Season total: .289/.337/.525 27 HR 73 RBI 58 2B
Tigers: .273/.328/.462 11 HR 37 RBI 37 2B
Cubs: .321/.356/.646 16 HR 36 RBI 21 2B
Castellanos was hitting the cover off the ball this year, both with the Cubs and Tigers. He led all of baseball with 58 doubles and constantly puts the bat on the ball. He also featured is 21.5 K% this year which is just below the average of 21.7. But what makes him a very interesting player for the Yankees is what he could do in the stadium.
Would Thrive At Yankee Stadium
When you look at Castellanos’s splits for the year, you can see that his stats were much better when he was traded. He hit more homers and had a much higher slugging % with the Cubs in a short period of time than he did with the Tigers for more than half the season, and there is a reason for that. He was hitting in one of the biggest parks in baseball: Comerica Park. The dimensions of the field are 345ft in LF, 420ft in CF, and 330ft RF. It is a very spacious park and 45% of his doubles with the Tigers were at home. Once he got to Wrigley Field he started to hit more homers, as it wasn’t as big of a park. Now imagine Castellanos playing at Yankee Stadium for half the year with left field being 318ft and right being 314ft. It would be something to watch as you would expect some of those doubles he hit at Comerica to be homers if they were hit at Yankee Stadium. If he were to join the Yankees, I could see him hitting 35-40 homers. Overall, Castellanos would absolutely thrive at Yankee Stadium and would be a great piece for the Yankees.