On Friday night, the Phillies came back from a first inning deficit to win a baseball game in their own personal house of horrors. Traveling to Arizona has always brought back bad memories for team, none more harmful than the failure to win the 2023 NLCS from a team that they were heavily favored to defeat. Prior to that, the objective feeling has always been that going there has resulted in strange outcomes, most of them not in the Phillies’ favor.

Part of that victory was Nick Castellanos coming off the bench to have a solid game. Entering the game in the sixth inning, he proceeded to hit his 250th career home run that extended the Phillies lead to 5-2, then another RBI single that essentially iced the game.

However, once the game was over, that’s when the pot started stirring around the team. It began in the immediate aftermath where the announcers for the game, Scott Franzke and Ruben Amaro, asked Castellanos a few questions that were given a rather terse response.

In fairness to Castellanos, rarely is the time when he gives answer that meander around a path that leads to answers people are looking for. Usually, he is direct with what he has to say, not choosing to beat around the bush. How that comes off depends on the person listening to it. Franzke and Amaro were clearly looking for some kind of insight into where Castellanos currently is right now and when they didn’t get it, they wisely moved on.

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Then, we had the locker room scrum in which there were several questions asked by reporters where the usual honesty Castellanos responds with came off a bit…..well, judge for yourself (note: the video is about five minutes long).

The larger part of the talking points today centered around this interview and how Castellanos handled himself when being asked the questions he was being asked.

To which I would respond: they’re both in the right.

Starting with the reporters, they are a group that are there to make sure the questions that need to be asked are asked. Several of these questions are ones that should be asked because whether he likes it or not, the decline of Castellanos’ playing time is a story right now that is swirling around the team. Not asking the questions of Castellanos when they had him for the interview would be not doing their job. Could and should they have asked fewer questions about, say, his future beyond this season? Of course. Right now, this is a team that has won 16 of their last 21 games and it possibly the hottest team in the game. Trying to get him to say something about the season beyond the one in front of them felt like baiting. Castellanos was right in trying to bring the interview back around to the team and deflect away from himself outside of how he contributed to the win last night.

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Still, for the most part, the questions that they were trying to get answers to felt totally fair and within the boundaries of trying to wrap their head around the entirety of the story. Blaming the reporters for doing their job isn’t really fair.

It’s also fair to say that Castellanos was right in his responses as well. If we’ve learned anything from him over the years he has been here, it’s that when he gives an answer, it’s honest. It’s what he’s thinking about of late. His answers aren’t going to be something where he recites preloaded cliches about the game, hoping that his answers play well in the public. He has always, and will likely continue to, give the truth when asked a question. How he answers will, again, be received based on the point of view of the person listening.

If we’re going to judge Castellanos and where he is at right now, the interview that he did with Mookie Betts for his podcast is probably a bit more insightful than what he gave last night.

A player being more comfortable around another player is going to lead to answers that feel more genuine. That’s not something we shouldn’t expect. They going to be more open and more honest with people that truly know and feel what it is like to go through something Castellanos is currently going through right now. While that may seem a bit odd when it comes to a superstar like Betts, there was a time where he (Mookie) was struggling as well, like when he first arrived in Boston. He knows what it is like to doubt, so Castellanos probably felt more comfortable in that setting than in the setting he found himself in last night.

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Listen, the Phillies won the game last night and inched a bit closer to securing what looks like a needed first round bye for themselves. That should be the lead story about the Phillies today. However, if the postgame comments made by Castellanos are going to something that surrounds the team at all, it shouldn’t be a “pick a side” type thing. Both sides were right with what they were doing, the reporters doing their job and the player responding with honesty and candor.

The best thing would be to move forward with trying to win baseball games as a team, not focusing on who might be where in 2026. While Castellanos and his playing time, as I said earlier, are a story, at this point in the season, it really should not be. The focus for this team should be on winning and winning only. Continuing this run that they are on will go a good way to doing that.