Nick Castellanos is Available: Why the Pirates Should and Shouldn’t Bite

It’s no secret that Pirates general manager Ben Cherington will be looking for offense this offseason. In 2025, the Bucs hit .231/.305/.350. That amounted to the worst OPS in MLB, and only two teams had a worse batting average. No team hit fewer home runs than the Pirates’ 117. Their outfielders were the biggest culprits. With one of the best young pitching staffs in baseball, the Pirates wasted a short window of opportunity to contend. They can’t repeat that mistake in 2026.

Why the Pirates Should Pursue Castellanos

The Pirates aren’t expected to be big spenders in the free agent market. Over the last two years, their “high-profile” free agent signings, if you can call them that, were Michael A. Taylor and Rowdy Tellez in 2024 and Adam Frazier and Tommy Pham in 2025. All were one-year deals. At $4.025 million, Pham’s was the most lucrative. If the Pirates won’t go beyond a one-year deal for $4-5 million, a trade for Castellanos might be as good as it gets.

Although his statistics didn’t live up to the contract, Castellanos’ home run and RBI totals would have placed second on the Pirates. He’d be an instant upgrade over Pham, who enjoyed a midseason hot streak but, in the end, produced a mediocre stat line of .245/.330/.370, 10 HR, and 52 RBI. The 13-year veteran has plenty of postseason experience, too, from his time with the Detroit Tigers, Cincinnati Reds, and especially the Phillies. Managers of young teams like having a guy around who knows what it takes.

It can’t be ignored that the last time Castellanos was playing for his next contract, he had his best season. That was in 2021 for Cincy, when he hit .309/.362/.576, 34 HR, and 100 RBI.

But will Castellanos be more trouble than he’s worth? Nobody’s ever questioned his effort. The issues he had with Thomson revolved around a perceived lack of communication rather than his reduced playing time. Although Castellanos probably should have left those things unsaid, that won’t be an issue with Pirates manager Don Kelly, who drew high marks for his communication skills in his first season as a manager.

Why the Pirates Shouldn’t Pursue Castellanos

The Pirates won’t be successful with the attitude of, well, let’s sign this guy because he’s better than what he had. The Pirates need more than incremental improvement. Cherington needs to step outside that one-year-seven-figure-contract comfort zone in which he seems trapped. While the Pirates’ pitching staff is young, healthy, and contractually tied up to the club for a while, Cherington needs to go big and not settle for the Tommy Phams of the world. He’s been playing a baseball version of The Price is Right for six years now, and it’s not working.

Given his track record, Castellanos’ recent decline ordinarily might not seem so alarming. However, he’ll be 34 by the time spring training rolls around. That’s not an age where hitters normally reverse negative trends.

The Pirates don’t have a position for Castellanos, either. As a well-below-average outfielder, he’d be a disaster patrolling PNC Park’s vast left field expanse. If he plays his more familiar right field, Bryan Reynolds would move to left field. Although Reynolds played there regularly for most of 2019-24, he doesn’t get high defensive marks there, either. One solution would be to make one of them the permanent designated hitter. That would mean replacing franchise icon Andrew McCutchen should he choose to come back. McCutchen’s numbers are declining, too. But swapping out “Cutch” and his .700 OPS for Castellanos’ .694 doesn’t represent an upgrade. And the Pirates would still need another outfielder.

The Last Word

It’s a subject that’s received considerable debate on Pirates social media since the availability of Castellanos was first reported. The majority are against the idea of Castellanos in a Pirates uniform. For once, they’re right. Cherington needs to make some serious moves to upgrade the Pirates’ offense. This shouldn’t be one of them.