Nick Castellanos is settling into San Diego with a simple philosophy: see ball, hit ball \u2014 and never stop being himself.<\/p>\n
The San Diego Padres newcomer hit his first round-tripper of spring training Tuesday, a 2-run blast in the 3rd inning against the Chicago White Sox. The Padres are hoping to see a lot more of that during the regular season after the team finished 29th in baseball in home runs last year.<\/p>\n
Castellanos said he keeps his approach at the plate straightforward.<\/p>\n
“I’m a kid that believes in himself, who knows he can hit, who remembers to take a deep breath when he steps into the box, and look for the inside part of the baseball,” Castellanos said.<\/p>\n
ABC 10News Sports Director Ben Higgins sat down with Castellanos on his “Ben and Woods” radio show in Peoria, where he revealed himself as a thoughtful ballplayer who doesn’t try to overthink the game.<\/p>\n
“The smarter Nick tries to get the worse hitter Nick becomes,” Castellanos said on 97.3 The Fan.<\/p>\n
Castellanos became available when the Philadelphia Phillies released him following a confrontation with manager Rob Thomson last season. He admits he could have handled the situation in a better way, but also says he needs to be his authentic self.<\/p>\n
“When I see something, I need to speak up. I need to, because if I don’t, I’ll swallow it, and I’ll keep swallowing it until the point I can’t no more, and sometimes when it bubbles over it comes out quite colorful,” Castellanos revealed.<\/p>\n
That passion and confidence doesn’t mean Castellanos isn’t a good teammate, as he’s quickly become a favorite among players in the Padres clubhouse.<\/p>\n
“I’ll do whatever you need. I’ll play first, I’ll play left. If Tatis needs a blow, I’ll play right, I’ll DH, whatever,” Castellanos said.<\/p>\n
And it seems what Castellanos wants most of all is to set a good example for his biggest fan \u2014 his son, Liam.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know if I’m a good dad or a bad dad, but I know that I like when he’s next to me so that he can see the behind-the-scenes work it takes to be great,” Castellanos said.<\/p>\n
The Padres hope Liam has plenty to cheer for in 2026.<\/p>\n
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nick Castellanos is settling into San Diego with a simple philosophy: see ball, hit ball \u2014 and never…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":604723,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2407],"tags":[5,4,8639,43,40,137,18,4339,4338,151],"class_list":{"0":"post-604722","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego-padres","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-nick-castellanos","11":"tag-padres","12":"tag-phillies","13":"tag-san-diego","14":"tag-san-diego-padres","15":"tag-sandiego","16":"tag-sandiegopadres","17":"tag-spring-training"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/604723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}