LAKELAND, Fla. — No way. This dude cannot be 19.
Izaac Pacheco looks like a grown man. He is tall and strong and he looks so familiar. There was just something about him … but I couldn’t place it.
The dark hair. The dark eyes. The way he carries himself. The quiet confidence.
Pacheco stood in front of me outside the Detroit Tigers‘ facility, towering over me, his jersey unbuttoned — the flap open.
Just like… Wait a second…
Suddenly, it hit me: Pacheco reminds me of Nick Castellanos, the former Tiger.
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They are the same height — both listed at 6 feet 4 —and were selected at nearly the same draft position, at nearly the same age. The Tigers drafted Castellanos No. 44 overall in 2010 out of a Florida high school; they drafted Pacheco No. 39 overall in 2021 out of a Texas high school.
Strange.
There’s one more thing: They both have that same quietly intense competitive nature.
“I feel good,” Pacheco said outside the Tigers’ facility after a minicamp practice. “I feel like I’m getting into it.”
Pacheco was drafted as a shortstop — and yes, Castellanos played shortstop in high school. When Castellanos was in the minor leagues, then-assistant general manager Al Avila would tell me: Castellanos is only going to get stronger, only going to get better as he gets older.
Avila predicted Castellanos, now 29, would one day hit for power — and then he did. Castellanos hit 16 homers in just 51 games with the Chicago Cubs after the Tigers traded him away in 2019, and then hammered 34 homers for the Cincinnati Reds in 2021.
Here’s the crazy thing about Pacheco — he already has the physical side. Already has man strength. He weighed 230 pounds last year, but he lost about 10 pounds to improve his quickness.
But it appears he has kept his power.
So that’s the big difference: Pacheco has more power at 19 — less than a year out of high school — than Castellanos at the same age.
Which is kinda crazy.
Castellanos slowly developed into a power-hitting threat. He got stronger and more physical as he aged, but he didn’t top 25 home runs until he was 25.
Now, let me be clear, I’m not putting Castellanos-type pressure on Pacheco. Nor am I saying anything about expectations.
But the resemblance is kind of wild.
“I love being here,” Pacheco said. “We’re lucky enough to get out here and play baseball. It’s been a blessing and I’m excited for the season to come.”
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Learning from failure
Last year, Pacheco played 30 games in the Florida Complex League.
But it didn’t come easy. He hit .226 in 106 at-bats with one home run. But he struck out 43 times; it was the first time he struggled in baseball. “I gained a ton, being able to fail, picking myself back up, being able to learn adjustments on my own,” he said. “It taught me a ton. I learned so much from that type of failure, how to make adjustments pitch by pitch.”
But he grew from those struggles.
And he is showing power in batting practice.
“Yeah, I feel good,” he said. “I’m spreading the ball across the field, showing a little power, but mainly I’m focusing on hitting the ball to all parts of the field and hitting line drives and making good contact.”
Which sounds like Castellanos.
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Lessons from his father
Pacheco fell out of the crib hitting for power.
OK. Not quite.
But close.
“I’ve had power my whole life,” he said. “I used to struggle with hitting the ball the other way. And for me this offseason, I just focused on making better contact through all parts of the field and kind of having a simple swing, using my body and my legs, using the power from the ground.”
He learned his swing from his father, Jerry.
Jerry recently built a new house with a hitting facility. “It’s just something I’ve always wanted to do,” he said. “It’s a length of a good size cage with all your workout equipment and all that stuff.”
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After taking about a week off, Izaac resumed training, getting ready for this season.
“He came back with a plan for the offseason,” Jerry said. “He worked extremely hard in the offseason. He learned from his first year of pro ball, or half a year, whatever that was. It was enough to get a few at-bats and learn from it and we planned this offseason around it.”
Pacheco is trying to learn consistency. “It’s having a simple swing,” he said. “You don’t want too many parts in your swing. Hitting a baseball is hard enough. Everyone throws 100 miles per hour, and it’s going all these different ways. And, for me, it’s just trying to catch the bat with the ball. It’s kind of just keep it at that level actually.”
Trying to keep it all at a simple level.
Castellanos had a similar approach. “Stay calm and swing at strikes — that’s all I have to do,” he once told me.
Keeping it simple.
They even talk about some of the same things.
It’s just kinda wild and feels so familiar.
Contact Jeff Seidel: jseidel@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @seideljeff. To read his recent columns, go to freep.com/sports/jeff-seidel.