Once the Reds were eliminated from the postseason Tuesday, Reds right fielder Nick Castellanos started giving more thought to his future. Castellanos can exercise an opt-out clause from his four-year, $64 million contract in the offseason, but he hasn’t made his decision yet.
Castellanos plans to have conversations with his wife, Jess, and his agent, Scott Boras, after the season.
“I don’t know what I want,” Castellanos said. “There is so much information that I’m going to take in. I also have to take into mind the status of the game. The Collective Bargaining Agreement is now coming up. Once I take a step back from the season and have some days at home with my family and I’m able to just hang out with my wife, dog and kid, and we can just talk about what happened and get as much information as I can.”
This could be Castellanos’ second foray into the free-agent market after he went through it following the 2019 season before signing with Cincinnati in January 2020. He knows it could be a stressful winter trying to figure out where he wants to play.
“These are major decisions,” Castellanos said. “You have to balance everything that you possibly can: How much you like where you’re playing, how close it is to home because I’m co-parenting, where the organization is in the spot to compete, and obviously, the financial part of it is important as well. It’s a balance of all of that, which will [help] make the best decision possible. It could very well be here in Cincinnati. The bargaining agreement could go to [pot] and I’m not in a spot to opt out, so I have no idea what’s going to happen.
I don’t know what is going to happen, but this has been the most consistent, happiest I’ve been playing baseball ... my 2021 season.”