Nicholas Castellanos is one of the Tigers' two best trade chips, and he might be trying to help his value in an odd way.
The Detroit outfielder hit a walkoff home run in Sunday's 4-3 win over the Blue Jays, but he chose to vent his frustrations while speaking about the game.
"This park is a joke," he told reporters, via the Detroit News. "It's to the point where how are we going to be compared to the rest of the people in the league in terms of power numbers, OPS, slugging and all that stuff when we got a yard out here that's 420 feet straight across center field?"
Castellanos was a top-10 prospect before he made his MLB debut in 2013, but he has never quite developed the power many evaluators thought he would. He was given a future 70-grade power by MLB Pipeline in 2013 which has been given to only a few players such as Miguel Sano with the Twins and Joey Gallo of the Rangers.
Despite those projections, he has never hit more than 26 home runs at any level despite power numbers going up across the board in MLB. The 27-year-old seems to have an idea why, and he says opponents even point out part of the problem.
"We'll get on second base or third base and they'll come up and be like, 'Man, how do you guys do this?'" Castellanos said. "We play 81 games here, man. I don't want to hear about the two you hit that are questionable."
To an extent Castellanos does have a point. He has 104 home runs in his career with 60 of those on the road. In his six-plus seasons with the Tigers at Comerica Park, he has hit a home run every 34.9 at-bats. In road games, he homers in every 26.4 at-bats.
That is a difference, but it's not a huge one. It probably comes out to about two home runs hit in an average per year (3,118 career at-bats at 26.4 ABs per home run = 118 career homers or 14 more in total over seven years).
So how does this matter in the bigger picture? Castellanos, 27, is a free agent after the season, and it's unlikely that he'll re-sign with the Tigers. So Detroit is trying to trade him, and teams like the Cubs are interested. And if he wants to be traded, which he very well could, he might be trying to get better teams interested in him, leading to either a World Series chance this postseason or simply a chance to get with a team he could feel out and possibly consider re-signing with.
At the same time, despite his weekend remarks, he has enjoyed his time in Detroit, so he very well could be trying to raise his trade value for the good of the team. Either way, Castellanos is pointing out something and that statement could easily influence some of the conversations about his game. We'll see if this changes his worth in other teams' eyes though and results in a deal.
One thing is for sure though, if and when Castellanos leaves Detroit, he's not going to miss Comerica.
"I mean, they can move in center and right-center field," he said. "There's no reason I hit a ball 434 feet off (Nationals right-hander) Anibal Sanchez and it goes in the first row. That shouldn't happen. But I'm not in charge of that either."