PHILADELPHIA — Nick Castellanos’ answers aren’t all that dissimilar to his hits that come once every three or four plate appearances (he’s having a good season so far).
Apparently straightforward, though often on a one-line path, and more than occasionally difficult to grasp.
But in the afterglow of essentially icing an 11-4 Phillies win over the Blue Jays with his sixth-inning grand slam home run Sunday, Castellanos’ response to a wholly anticipated media pitch traveled further afield than anyone could have expected.
So Nick, how’d it feel hitting that four-ply home run?
“Honestly, I felt pretty bad,” Castellanos said with a serious look, “because I know Swanson’s kid had an accident in spring training last year.”
Google was immediately employed by the visiting clubhouse crowd.
The pitching victim for a line drive that Castellanos drove through a fairly significant incoming breeze — a drive that managed to clear the fence by, oh, maybe a couple of inches or so — was Toronto pitcher Eric Swanson. The 31-year-old veteran is having a rough time of it in this, his seventh season.
But it’s nothing like what he and his wife Madison had to go through in late February of 2024, when son Toby was hit by a car in Dunedin, Fla., the Blue Jays’ spring training home.
Toby was airlifted to a hospital and was initially in critical condition, but within a week was back with his family ready to finish his spring.
Press accounts noted Swanson saying “God is good,” about his son’s recovery.
So maybe it was on this Father’s Day that fellow major leaguer and fellow father Nick Castellanos identified with the guy in the other uniform, remembering how moved he’d been by the accident that sent young Toby to the hospital.
He might have been even thinking about it as he rounded the bases after giving the Phillies a 10-2 lead in the sixth inning.
“I was like, ‘(Crap), I wish I would have hit it off anybody else,’ ” Castellanos said.
But once that he had quieted everyone with that thought, father-of-three Castellanos would openly tell of how it felt to hit a Father’s Day grand slam with his family in the Citizens Bank Park stands.
“That’s awesome, right?” Castellanos said. “To be able to say I hit a grand slam on Father’s Day, that’s something I’ll be able to remember for the rest of my life.”
A lifetime memory indeed, so long as he doesn’t think too deeply about the guy who threw the pitch.
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Speaking of the big guy upstairs, Otto Kemp was feeling the spirit a bit on this day, too.
The nice-guy rookie who went from being an undrafted baseball grad of the Point Loma Nazarene University Sea Lions to the backup first baseman for the Phillies in only five years’ time, had himself a Sunday, too.
Kemp went 4-for-5 and knocked in two runs, raising his batting average from .250 to .345. Through his eight-game career after being called up from Triple-A СŷƵ, Kemp has twice had three or more hits in a game. When he was first called up, he was well known for being that nice guy from … that little college near San Diego. Now?
“He’s got a lot of fire,” Castellanos said of Kemp. “He’s living his dream right now, right? Fresh in the big leagues, lot of energy, excited to be here. Gets to the ballpark eight hours before the game starts, so it’s just fun to watch.”
“I think it really is just an extension of where we were at,” said Kemp, who signed as an undrafted free agent in 2022 and made every minor league leap from low-A ball to the IronPigs and now the Phillies since then.
“Just building on this whole season, trying not to change anything, the same game that we’ve been playing all year,” he says. “The goal is to feel better from beginning to end but obviously … there’s some ups and downs in there. I’m just trying to stay consistent and keep repeating the same thing every day.
“It’s refreshing, obviously, but for me I believe in my swing, I believe in what we created and this is the result of that. That was good to know that I can trust myself and my swing will be what it needs to be at the end of the day.”
As you might see, Kemp occasionally talks in pluralities. At 26, he’s married but has no children. He is one of four kids in his family, so maybe having a support group isn’t so different for him. But then there’s that other guy upstairs …
“The season is crazy, but we get time to relax in the offseason,” Kemp said. “This is what you dream of, this is what you play for. We’re enjoying it; we’re enjoying the ride. We’ll get a chance to celebrate at some point, but yeah, it’s been a good week, it’s been a crazy week.
“But God is good.”
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NOTES >> In addition to Castellanos’ solid line-drive grand slam, Alec Bohm buried one deep into the left field seats in the fifth inning. It was said to have traveled 433 feet according to whatever app MLB is using to do that these days. If so, that would be the sixth-farthest of Bohm’s career according to the Phillies. … Zack Wheeler cruised to his seventh win of the season, using only 94 pitches, allowing one earned run on four hits with nine strikeouts. … J.T. Realmuto had his 400th career hit.
