Nicholas Castellanos has not been very good at third base so far this season for the Detroit Tigers. In fact, he has been downright awful as he leads Major League Baseball third basemen with 11 errors on the season.
Because of his inability to field the ball at the hot corner, Tigers manager Brad Ausmus will often replace Castellanos in the field when it gets to be late in the game. It’s a no-brainer decision for Ausmus and any other manager in the game would do the exact same thing.
[the_ad id=”80408″]
Well, on Wednesday night, with the Tigers leading the Los Angeles Angels 4-0 in the bottom of the 8th inning, Castellanos singled to get on base. Ausmus immediately made the decision to send in Andrew Romine as a pinch runner, effectively ending Nicholas’ night.
As Castellanos walked off the field and into the Tigers dugout, he slammed his helmet into the helmet rack. Instead of going into the rack, it ricocheted and hit Tigers first baseman Miguel Cabrera just under his left eye. Miggy clearly looked to be in a bit of pain after getting hit as he held his face.
What not to do in the dugout. #Tigers @tigers #NicholasCastellanos pic.twitter.com/tyO60SGFQ6
— Kevin (@kevinfillmore) June 8, 2017
[the_ad id=”78455″]
Following the game, Ausmus explained his reasoning for removing Castellanos from the base paths after his single, rather than waiting for the top of the ninth to make the defensive replacement.
“He’s actually a decent base runner, but the fact of the matter is that Romine was gonna play third and Romine might be our best base runner. So if I’m going to make the move I might as well make the move right there, even though it could be a marginal plus on the base running side,” Aumus said.
The Tigers ended up winning the game 4-0 behind another excellant start by Buck Farmer, who was called up recently from Toledo to replace Matt Boyd in the rotation.
