Nick Castellanos Is Basically JD Martinez Reincarnated And It Makes Me Want To Puke

Last night I watched Nick Castellanos go 4-5 with a dinger, 3 RBIs and a few other really timely hits.  Before we get into how much I love Nick Castellanos as a hitter, just know that my love for him dates back a LONG time, so don’t accuse me of being “CubsFanDave” or whatever the fuck.  This is what I found in my 2 second twitter search to somewhat back myself up:

He also swung by Barstool HQ2 about a year ago while the Chicago crew was out there to record with Carrabis and I remember talking to a few of the NYC guys about how good of a hitter he is.  He just never really got the credit he deserved because of a few reasons.

1. He has been playing for a dog shit Detroit team his whole career
2. Comerica Park is a crazy good pitcher’s park which has tempered his stats

Playing for the Tigers really killed his spirits because he knew he might not get a big payday because his “sexy”, face value stats aren’t anything crazy.  I’m friends with the MLB.com White Sox beat writer and he mentioned to me recently that his colleagues that cover the Tigers feel like Castellanos “escaped from prison” now that he’s playing on a contender and in a normal sized ballpark.  And we can see why.  Take a look at his spray chart overlay from Detroit vs. Wrigley Field:

So when Castellanos said playing at Comerica Park is a “joke”, he wasn’t lying.  It suppressed his stats BIG TIME. Like… we’re talking an addition 10+ dingers, a much higher slugging/ISO, more RBIs, the whole 9 yards.  Going from Comerica to Wrigley truly was a prison escape for him and you can tell he’s beyond happy with how he’s carrying himself every day on the North Side.

But these last 3 weeks of Castellanos murdering baseballs had me paying much closer attention to him.  I am not embellishing when I say this, this guy is a god damn carbon copy of JD Martinez.  Now he is a tick below Martinez in terms of pure hitting ability, but fundamentally the two are so similar it’s crazy.  It honestly pisses me off the Tigers gave him up for NOTHING to the Cubs.

Let’s take a look at a few GIFs:

I want to focus on three things here: back hip/leg drive, torso/core and bat path.  Let’s start with his back hip/leg drive in another GIF:

I’ve said this 10000x now and I will take it to the grave: proper fundamentals in any sport start at the ground and work their way up through the body.  I.E. – a basketball player, an offensive lineman, a hitter, a linebacker, etc., all must have good balance in their feet for the rest of their body to work properly.  The feet are where the kinetic chain of explosion starts.  If a basketball player is defending 2010 Derrick Rose and is on his heels, he’s going to get crossed up.  If a LB is filling a hole on a fullback but isn’t exploding through the ball carrier with his feet and legs, he’s going to get truck sticked.  Same principle applies for a hitter.  He has to have great balance and drive his back leg and hip through the baseball in as straight a line as possible.

I like to use this analogy; imagine two trains driving towards each other on the same track.  They’re going to make a head on collision and the collision is going to be huge because they will eventually meet head on.  BOOM.  Now imagine two trains hitting each other at a, say, 45 degree angle.  The collision won’t be as big because they didn’t hit each other head on.  Same thing for a hitter attacking a baseball.  The good ones, like Castellanos above, drive their back hip and leg STRAIGHT THROUGH the baseball.  They don’t “squish the bug” because that causes rotation in the body and the impact when the bat meets the ball won’t be as big because the bat meets the ball at an angle.

Castellanos has a ton of momentum built up in his legs before he even decides to swing or not.  This is from his front leg kicking back and transferring weight/tension onto his back leg and hip.  He keeps everything on the same 180 degree line when doing so.  But that’s just the very start of his swing.

~ moving on ~

I’ve now separated the GIF to just focus on his core, or the area from his waistline to his shoulders.  Castellanos builds up absurd tension in his core and because his feet, legs and hips are so good to start his swing.  Look at his front shoulder; it’s almost pointing at the 1B dugout, with his back shoulder and elbow pointing at the 3B dugout.   Pair the directions of his shoulders with the explosive forward motion of his feet, legs and hips and his left lat muscle and obliques become wound tight like a catapult ready to explode the second his brain says “swing”.  Like no bullshit his core is a Game of Thrones style medieval weapon and once his brain does say “swing”…

…this forces his hands to move forward like so:

It’s all just one giant chain reaction of explosiveness.  His feet, legs and hips do 90% of the work and allow the rest of his body to follow suit.  Once he decides to swing the bat, all he has to do is explode downward with his right elbow to complete the motion and if he finds a barrel, it’s bombs away because he generates a ton of lift with his upper cut bat path. Truly a thing of beauty.  His feet, legs, hips, and core do 99% of the swinging for him.  The bat is just an extension of his arms, which is where the kinetic chain ends.

And it reminds me SO MUCH of JD Martinez, one of the very best pure hitters in baseball:

Here’s Martinez back from when he was on Detroit as well:

The resemblance is uncanny between the two.  Oh, and you can basically say the same thing about Kris Bryant and the them as well:

I said it in a post last week; hitting mechanics don’t have to be some crazy scientific formula.  Guys like the three above have mastered the art of hitting and their mechanics are simple.  There’s obviously a shot I am too dumb to understand all of the scientific lingo and kinetic breakdowns of hitters, but if a baseball player has the coordination and work ethic to duplicate the swings of the best hitters in baseball, chances are they’ll be successful if they can pair it with a good mental approach to attacking pitching.  To me that doesn’t seem like rocket science, more just a tireless work ethic in the video room and on the tee.

It makes me fucking sick the Tigers gave up both Castellanos and Martinez for nothing.  It really does.  Every day that goes by I want the Sox to offer Castellanos the world this winter because he would fucking raaaakkkkkeeee at the Cell.  But I have a sneaky suspicion his first few weeks on the Cubs has sold him to do whatever he can to call it a career on the north side.  You can tell he absolutely loves it there.