Messy Phillies divorce with Nick Castellanos is proof the NY Mets did everything right

If you’re a New York Mets fan, the Nick Castellanos situation in Philadelphia reads like a cautionary tale and a weird little validation tour at the same time.

Because whatever you want to call what the Mets dealt with last season — tension, cliques, “vibes,” guys not totally aligned — they at least handled it like a franchise that understands how fragile a clubhouse can be. Quiet fixes. Real decisions. Minimal public mess.

The Phillies did the opposite. They let a strained relationship linger until it became a full-on, public divorce.

Mets’ cold-blooded roster decisions look genius next to Philly’s Nick Castellanos spiral

Matt Gelb’s reporting, as circulated widely, paints a clubhouse that didn’t just get annoyed with Castellanos. It got tired of him. Teammates resenting the attitude. A line-crossing incident that stuck. Prominent players distancing themselves. Everyone “playing nice” because it was easier than reopening the wound every day. And when players are saying things like “you can’t disrespect the manager and talk to him the way he did,” that’s a room deciding it has a standard — and one guy failed it. 

What makes it worse is the Phillies didn’t cut it off quickly. The whole thing festered. And then it culminated in the kind of organizational decision that screams “we can’t do this anymore.”

Castellanos’ exit became headline-level messy, especially with the fallout from the Miami incident where he admitted he broke a rule by bringing a beer into the dugout, then described a confrontation with Rob Thomson and a follow-up meeting with Dave Dombrowski. Even the way Dombrowski framed it publicly — basically, it wasn’t just one incident — tells you the relationship had been rotting for a while. 

New York didn’t pretend everything was perfect in 2025, but they acted like a team that refuses to let tension become the product. Jeff McNeil getting moved was the clearest example. The reporting around his situation wasn’t that he couldn’t play. It was that the situation had become one more thread in a clubhouse that needed simplifying, fast. And once you’re in that spot, you don’t play nice for months and hope it magically heals. 

Even the Brandon Nimmo part of this conversation fits the theme. Whether fans loved the move or hated it emotionally, the Mets didn’t drag it out. They made a decision, took the heat, and moved on. Anthony DiComo even framed the Nimmo trade as a baseball move that created flexibility and helped reshape how the roster could be built. 

That’s the difference Mets fans should take away from the Phillies disaster.

The Phillies let one relationship become a slow-motion civil war. The Mets recognized their own internal friction and started cutting off oxygen to it. Not with a press conference. Not with leaks. With roster decisions.