Phillies Struggling Superstar Viewed As One Of Baseball's 'Biggest Disasters'

The Philadelphia Phillies have a superstar player off to a cold start and people are starting to worry.

Apr 23, 2024; Cincinnati, Ohio, USA; Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Nick Castellanos (8) at bat / Katie Stratman-USA TODAY Sports

The Philadelphia Phillies have been off to a hot start in 2024, but that is not the case for all of their players.

In fact, one of their superstars has been off to such a poor start that Bleacher Report's Kerry Miller named him as one of the biggest disasters of the season.

Nick Castellanos is slashing just .186/.250/.254 through the first 32 games of 2024. He's been by far the worst of Philadelphia's regular contributors at the plate.

He's gotten a little bit unlucky at the plate, an xBA of .201, but it's not anything major that he could use as an excuse.

He's simply just not hitting the ball well. The 32-year-old is worse off in pretty much every contact-based statistic that you could come up.

He's starting to turn things around, though, as both of his home runs on the season have come in the past week. A .227/.320/.500 slashing line is still not exactly where the Phillies want him to be though.

One of the best things about Castellanos throughout his career is that he has been able to find a nice balance between contact and power. For most of this season, he has just had neither.

His bat also usually makes up for the fact that he is a negative on defense, so when he doesn't bring the offense things look even worse.

Like mentioned earlier, though, it hasn't had that much of an effect on their season. The Phillies have been able to work around their $20 million investment dissappearing so far.

Philadelphia sits at 21-11, half a game behind the Atlanta Braves and 4.5 games ahead in the Wild Card race.

If they can keep performing at a high level, Castellanos should have his bat wake up at some point and make things even better for the hopeful contenders.