I'm Getting a Sports Complex

I feel nothing about the Nick Castellanos release

Adios to a clown the team won’t miss; sorry you wasted all that money, Phils

Published February 14, 2026

It never felt like the Phillies needed Nick Castellanos, or that they even meant all that much to sign him. Sounds odd, but when you consider they inked him just two days after Kyle Schwarber during the late stages of spring training in 2022, it was an inauspicious beginning to what turned out to be a very flawed four-year Phillies tenure for Casty.

The guy had an all-star season in 2023 (although all-star appearances are a screwy barometer for a player’s performance in a given year), but it was pretty hard to watch for long stretches of Nick’s Phillies pinstripes era. He had one monster playoff series, but he largely fell flat during all of the other ones he appeared in. The team not only needed more from him on the field, but all of the other hijinks were just unnecessary.

I’m not sure how long we’ll be talking about “the Miami incident” or “beer in the dugout” or whatever we’ll call it, but it’s funny for about 10 seconds before you realize how dumb the whole situation was. Rob Thomson and the team seemed to stick with him way longer than was feasible, so for Nick to throw a fit and use a beer as a prop was just dumb. But you could forgive that if he actually produced when he was in the lineup. Unfortunately, he did not.

It’s generally understood that, when you earn any kind of living, you’re supposed to listen to your boss and try to implement their advice to the best of your ability. I manage to do it, and I make less than 1% of what Castellanos did. But some egos are just too big, and money and privilege cloud judgment, and that leads to players being stubborn, not listening to coaches, and ultimately just making it about themselves. That appears to be what happened here.

The Phillies aren’t blameless, though. Rob and Dave Dombrowski knew what they were dealing with, and yet it still came to this. Now they’ll all look like dopes, paying over 95% of Castellanos’ salary in 2026 after he signed a deal with the Padres for the veteran minimum. That small amount is paid by San Diego, but the Phillies are on the hook for all of the rest. The best you can say is, at least this is only a one-year mistake before it’s off the books entirely. Still, a terrible job to let it get to this point and not even be able to entice anyone anywhere to make a trade for him.

Aside from injuries, none of these contracts should be so disastrous that someone gets entirely cut from the squad before they run out. Part of me wonders, if the Phillies had won a World Series with Castellanos on the roster, would all of this have happened? And, even if the dugout beer did play out the same way, would the team have just bit their tongue and let Nick stick around for the last year of the contract? Or would a recent title have somehow emboldened them to cut/trade him on the spot? Hypotheticals, of course, because the trophy case remains empty this decade.

Castellanos’ reception from the fans when he returns to CBP in June will be interesting. I’d expect mostly cheers with a reasonable amount of unhappiness mixed in. I probably won’t be at that series, but my most likely greeting would be apathy, because I feel pretty dead about it.

Castellanos was paid to do a job, he was good sometimes, then mostly stunk especially when he was needed the most. He also got bent out of shape about a whole bunch of other stuff. Whatever, he was just a guy. We don’t need to dwell on it too much or make him out to be some misunderstood figure or martyr or scapegoat. He’s gone now, and the current team needs to move on. They’ll be fine without him.

Former Phillies outfielder Nick Castellanos

The patron saint of the low and away slider whiff is gone. (Matt Sullivan/Sporting News)

The Flyers blew yet another opportunity to matter

A shocker, I know.

Published January 30, 2026

It’s been depressing to watch, write about, and generally be a fan of the Flyers for a very long time now. Still, despite that, they did have something good brewing for the first half of this NHL season. Everything culminated in a great 5-2 home win versus Anaheim a few weeks ago, and the Flyers found themselves at 22-12-7 and in a playoff spot with the regular season exactly 50% over.

Since then, yikes.

The team is 2-8-2 over the last 12 games (including a very ugly 0-4-1 at home during that stretch), and everything has fallen apart. Even worse for the Orange and Black, it came at a time where people were actually starting to get a little bit excited about them and dream of a possible postseason appearance. The team was poised to make some inroads with Philly fans, given that the Eagles weren’t able to repeat last year’s title run and the Phillies’ offseason has largely drawn so much disappointment that fans don’t seem to be looking forward to this season at all.

As a result, the Flyers were presented with a stretch of a couple months that they could presumably share with the Sixers on the every-other-night-seesaw to try and give local fans something to look forward to and make them forget about their other issues. Instead, the Flyers are flaming out, and people are souring quickly on both the current team and its long-term outlook. Granted, the toxic swamp of Flyers Twitter is just one segment of the fanbase, but it doesn’t seem like you can go anywhere among the team’s fans OR to outside hockey experts to find anyone with even moderate optimism about the direction of the franchise.

Circle back to expectations from the beginning of the season. Were the Flyers SUPPOSED to make the playoffs this year? Not really. But they played well enough for about three months to make people believe. Now, however, they’ve gone so ice cold for almost a month that we are all bracing for their sixth straight playoff miss while teams with longer droughts like Buffalo and Detroit have jumped them and are ready to end their skids.

The Flyers just seem stuck, with nothing good happening at the moment and seemingly not much hope for the future. The Matvei Michkov excitement from last year has worn off completely and, even though there is still plenty of time for him to rebound to be an important part of any future success the team might have, they really are going to need to have some lottery luck and get the top center and/or defenseman that they so desperately need.

We thought that the Flyers might be in the playoff mix if they simply got better goaltending. But while they’ve gotten that (at least when Dan Vladar plays) there are still too many holes in the lineup to get them into the conversation. The power play also remains a joke, again an indictment on the lack of personnel who can actually put the puck in the net. Porter Martone can’t come soon enough, but you wonder how many other pieces they’ll need to complement him.

Put it all together, and it’s just the latest disappointing season of Flyers hockey. This one should feel worse to the organization than the last couple have, because they had a real opportunity this time and let it slip away. Knowing the Flyers, though, they’ll make a late run only to still finish out of the playoffs and only succeed in hurting their draft position. You know it’s coming, because Flyers.

People joke that the team is always “two years away from being two years away”. It’s run its course by now. Make it stop, because they’ve simply been a bad franchise for over a decade, and it’s embarrassing.

Philadelphia Flyers players react to allowing yet another goal.

Sam Ersson and company assume the position. Palpable regret from the fans. (Yong Kim/Inquirer)

(Don’t) repeat after me: Later, Birds

We hoped the Eagles would find another gear to defend their title, but they never did.

Published January 12, 2026

It’s pretty obvious now that the Eagles got by on reputation and a very good defense during the 2025 season, and that this team was missing some crucial elements that it had last year en route to a Super Bowl win.

Even with Jalen Hurts and much of the offense still intact, as well as some great young talent on the other side of the ball, the team was just a step slow all year, and it bit them in the end. By losing to a mediocre and also very banged-up 49ers team, the Eagles have thrown the spotlight on themselves, making us all wonder where we go from here. On the offensive side of the ball, the biggest change will be giving coordinator Kevin Patullo the pink slip at the earliest opportunity. He didn’t find a way to effectively use the weapons at his disposal this year, concocting a far too conservative style of play and just making the most bewildering play calls. Nick Sirianni deserves some blame for this too, but Nick isn’t going anywhere, despite what some pundits are probably saying.

It’s a real shame that Kellen Moore walked after last year, though he can’t be blamed for taking the top job in New Orleans, where he looks to have an up-and-coming team. Moore’s offensive design just seemed to be the perfect fit for the Eagles’ personnel, spreading the ball around to keep everyone happy and allowing for the kinds of big plays that were conspicuously absent from the team’s repertoire under Patullo in 2025.

As for on-field personnel, you can kiss A.J. Brown goodbye. You can never criticize the move to bring him in, because look at the overall results over four years. But guys hit a point where they’re not worth the headache. Maybe Moore wants to reunite with him in New Orleans? Make an offer. The Eagles also need to make some improvements on the O line. This was their worst year in a long time under Jeff Stoutland. A lot of that is due to injuries, but life without Lane Johnson is fast approaching. Stoutland needs to work a few more of his miracles to return this unit to prominence. I trust that he will find a way, because he always has.

The issues with the defense aren’t as glaring, but there is always room for improvement. Can the team get better secondary help for Mitchell and DeJean? Reed Blankenship had a terrible game against San Fran, so he could be on the outs. The team also needs a true pass rusher. It’s nice to get 6.5 sacks from Jalyx Hunt, but that shouldn’t lead your team.

Oh, and get ready for season 86 of Jake Elliott. He wasn’t great this year, but do you honestly think the team can find an upgrade? There are maybe 10 kickers in the league that you can describe as very reliable, and they won’t be moving anywhere. But Elliott will probably get scapegoated even though he didn’t directly cost the Eagles this year, so we’ll see what happens.

Overall, it’s just disappointing to easily win the possession battle in a home playoff game against an injured opponent, only allow one sack, and have a +2 turnover differential, but still get beat. The Eagles played ‘not to lose’ and were far too conservative, lacking the big-play ability and seemingly the will to win that they exhibited as champions last year. Now we’ll all dwell on it for months. It was always going to end this way, though. We were just in denial. But we’ll forget all over again in September.

If A.J. is checking his watch, it says “time to leave.” (Mitchell Leff/Getty)