The Phillies intend to move on from Nick Castellanos. Could a swap for Nolan Arenado be an option?

LAS VEGAS — No, the Phillies aren’t trading Bryce Harper. Not now, and if you know owner John Middleton, probably never.

Somehow, though, a candid assessment of Harper’s sub-elite season got spun into a trade-rumor soap opera, and Dave Dombrowski recently had to call Harper to clear air that was never actually polluted.

Dombrowski kept the details private, other than to say it was “a good conversation” that lasted “quite a while.” But he had no issue sharing his message from a more pertinent chat with a player who actually will be somewhere else next season.

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We’re talking, of course, about Nick Castellanos. And if the rest of baseball didn’t already know that the Phillies plan to move on from the malcontented right fielder, consider Dombrowski’s recounting of their conversation after the season ended.

“I did speak with Nick,” Dombrowski said Tuesday, the first full day of the annual general managers’ meetings at The Cosmopolitan. “I had a lengthy conversation with him. I think we’re just kind of open-minded for discussion purposes. … But sometimes change of sceneries can be beneficial for people, too.”

In other words, Castellanos is going, going, gone, unlike so many of the balls that he hit this season. It’s only a matter of whether the Phillies will be able to trade Castellanos or have to release him, in which case they would be on the hook for his $20 million salary next year.

Oh, speaking of which, in answering an unrelated question, Dombrowski mentioned a conversation from earlier Tuesday with another team about the lack of righty-hitting free-agent outfielders, a group that’s highlighted by Harrison Bader, Austin Hays, Rob Refsnyder, and Miguel Andujar.

“I was talking to another club [executive], and he says, ‘Well, we have a need for an outfielder. We don’t know where we’re going to find him,’” Dombrowski said. “There’s just not very many. There’s a couple of big-dollar guys out there, but they’re not going to be swimming in the big-dollar market, it didn’t sound like. It’s not easy to find.”

Guess which side of the plate Castellanos hits from.

» READ MORE: GM meetings preview: Phillies free agents, the budget question, and is Nick Castellanos tradeable?

Dombrowski and Castellanos have known each other for 15 years. The Tigers drafted Castellanos in 2010, when Dombrowski ran Detroit’s baseball operations. In 2022, Dombrowski recommended to Middleton that the Phillies sign Castellanos to a five-year, $100 million contract in free agency, a move that pushed the payroll beyond the luxury-tax threshold for the first time.

Last winter, when Castellanos’ name surfaced in trade rumors, he called Dombrowski, who denied them. That wasn’t the message this time.

In furnishing a virtual “for sale” sign in right field, Dombrowski made sure to note that Castellanos is healthy after playing through patellar tendinitis in his left knee for the final two months of the season.

“His knee is fine,” Dombrowski said.

Even so, there’s the matter of everything else. Start here: Castellanos will be 34 next season. He had the lowest wins above replacement of any qualified player in baseball this year (minus-0.6, according to FanGraphs). He’s amid a three-year decline (OPS 2023 to 2025: .788, .742, .694; homers: 29, 23, 17; slugging: .476, .431, .400; bat speed: 72.4 mph, 71.9, 70.5).

And then there was Castellanos’ public feud with manager Rob Thomson, touched off in June by a shocking incident of insubordination in the dugout after being removed for defense in the ninth inning of a game in Miami. Two months later, after losing his everyday job in right field, Castellanos criticized Thomson’s communication with players.

Castellanos lost that battle when the Phillies chose to keep Thomson in the manager’s chair for another season. Last month, Dombrowski said the team would discuss a contract extension with Thomson, who finished third in the National League Manager of the Year voting.

It may be that Castellanos is untradeable. Unless, of course, there’s a team that is looking to dump its own bad contract.

Behold the Cardinals, who have 34-year-old third baseman Nolan Arenado under contract for two more seasons and a total of $42 million, part of which is being paid by the Rockies. It’s clear they want out from under that deal.

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“I believe he’s going to the Hall of Fame, one of the better players in the history of the game, and with the Cardinals, he’s been really good,” St. Louis president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom said Tuesday. “We all feel like it’s best to find a different fit. So, obviously, we’ll work on that, and we’ll work on that with him.”

The Cardinals have been trying to move Arenado since last winter but were stymied by his no-trade clause. At the end of the season, he told reporters that he’d more strongly consider waiving it. Bloom said Arenado is “more open than he would have been in the past.”

Like Castellanos, Arenado’s numbers are going in the wrong direction. This season, he hit 12 homers and posted an 87 OPS+, his least productive full year since he was a rookie. His OPS since 2022: .891, .774, .719, .666.

“I would not look past the fact that he played hurt for a lot of the year,” Bloom said, referring to a right shoulder strain that put Arenado on the injured list in August. “You talk about guys posting and the value of that. He battled through a lot of things. It wasn’t until we made the moves we did at the deadline, selling, that he really took that break that he probably needed about a month and a half earlier than that.

“So I do think there were some mitigating factors. But there’s no doubt he’d be the first to tell you it wasn’t up to his standard.”

» READ MORE: Free-agent outlook: J.T. Realmuto will be 35, but he remains as valuable as ever to the Phillies

Even if the Cardinals paid Castellanos’ entire 2026 salary, they would save $17 million by moving Arenado’s. And if they get a bounce-back season from Castellanos, it would help an outfield that ranked 28th in baseball with a .634 OPS last season.

Arenado would make an aging Phillies roster even older. But it would free them up to trade Alec Bohm, perhaps for an outfielder. Arenado would also be a bridge to prized infield prospect Aidan Miller, who could be ready to take over at third base later next season.

Maybe there’s a bad contract match. Maybe not.

Regardless, the Phillies are moving on. Dombrowski already said as much to Castellanos.

“We’ll wait and see what happens,” he said.