PHILADELPHIA — Season postmortems can be rather sad affairs, in part because baseball’s ultimate thrill mandates a marathon in the making, a season too long followed by a postseason that for all teams but one is too short.
For the Phillies, who for the first time in their three-season renaissance were able to skip the wild card round of the playoffs, this year’s postseason expiration felt especially quick and cruel. The club that nearly went the distance as a longshot wild card in 2022, taking the World Series to six games against Houston, then went seven games into the 2023 NLCS before failing to play up to par in Games 6 and 7 against Arizona, was freely passed into the divisional round this year only to be outplayed in four games by their longtime rival, the New York Mets.
But six days later, here was Phillies president Dave Dombrowski overseeing his version of a postmortem party at Citizens Bank Park. No, not everything went perfect this time around, but maybe this team’s just getting started. Or is it more like starting over?
“I don’t think we need to add any more star players,” Dombrowski said Tuesday. “We have as many stars as any team in baseball.”
They also carried a $247 million and change total team payroll this year, according to Spotrac.com’s latest total-team-payroll tracking. That’s fourth-highest in the MLB. But hey, the Mets are No. 1 in that category and the Dodgers are fifth – if only because they’ve got so much backloaded that Shohei Ohtani will get paid by them when he’s swinging at Over-60 League softballs.
So if money has anything (or more likely, everything) to do with success in this sport, the Phillies are essentially right where they can expect to be. But any corporate overseer of teams with highly inflated payrolls know that with every talented group of players, there is a shelf life. So maybe future Hall of Fame executive Dombrowski is being optimistic while he still can.
“I don’t know with the top four, that there’s a better starting rotation in baseball,” he said of Zack Wheeler, Aaron Nola, Cristopher Sanchez and Ranger Suarez. “And when you look at some of the positional players, they’re really good. So I don’t necessarily think the answer is always a star player. I’m not saying we won’t get (another) one, but I don’t think it’s a necessity by any means.
“It’s a club capable of winning a World Championship. We’ve been close, we won 95 games, however, you’re also open-minded to making adjustments. … You’re never happy unless you win the whole thing, and we didn’t win the whole thing.”
How to change that? Maybe a few “adjustments” would help. Such as…
Requesting all his top hitters show a little better appreciation for the art of using the whole field when hitting. And maybe get catcher J.T. Realmuto to go along with manager Rob Thomson’s pleading for him to take more games off. (Thomson: “I’ve got to talk to J.T. about that. If you give J.T. some time off, I think his numbers will get better.”)
Oh, and one more thing: The Phillies should consider reinstitute Dancing On My Own as their playoff anthem. OK, maybe not.
But really, what more does Dave think would finally put this team over the top?
1. A viable No. 5 starter: Say goodbye next spring to Taijuan Walker. He’s only halfway through a four-year, $72 million deal. It would take a miracle for the club to be able to trade him, and yes, Dombrowski said he’ll be back for spring training but only if he sticks to a greatly enhanced “conditioning and throwing program” perhaps aimed at bringing his fastball up from snail’s pace to mediocre. If not, he’ll be dumped next spring. And right now, there is no replacement here for him.
2. Smooth out the middle infield swingers: That would be second baseman Bryson Stott and monied shortstop Trea Turner, who is still working on not becoming a fielding liability. Said Dombrowski: “He did not have an outstanding defensive (season). He does have good range, he makes really good plays at times. But he makes too many errors, at points.”
The Phillies are happy with the limited progress Turner made with the glove, but both him and especially Stott disappointed greatly offensively. Great efforts will be made to get them to “chase” less (swinging at bad pitches is a Phillies hallmark, no matter what the improving team metrics say) and to stop pulling the ball so much. And for Stott, since when did he start swinging from his heels every time up?
3. Figure out Alec Bohm: He was a starting National League All-Star, then cooled off, then hurt his hand, then couldn’t hit much of anything down the stretch drive and for the four playoff games against the Mets. But both Dombrowski and Thomson verbally shrugged at that Tuesday.
“He’s a good player; he knocked in close to 100 runs two years in a row,” Dombrowski said. “He’s one of the top hitters in the league, he’s improved defensively. He had an outstanding first half of the season and not an Alec Bohm second half of the season. But overall he’s a really good player.”
4. What of the outfield?: Dombrowski basically pledged his allegiance to both Nick Castellanos and Brandon Marsh as starting corners next year. And finally, he hasn’t pledged anything to Johan Rojas, the speedy, all-glove, no-bat centerfielder. The point was made clear: If Rojas doesn’t show vast offensive improvement the Phillies will likely go in another direction next year.
“I still can’t say for sure that he’s going to be our centerfielder,” Dombrowski said. “We have (Austin) Hays, of course, we’ll have to make a decision in that regard.”
Hays, the trade deadline acquisition who had injuries plus a kidney infection that essentially wiped out his late-summer prospects, made $6.3 million this year and is arbitration eligible for one more season. But there’s no guarantee the Phillies won’t tender him and let him go.
5. Bullpen blow-ups: It was nothing short of catastrophic against the Mets in the NLDS. That after being one of the better bullpens in the majors for most of the season.
It’s one thing to say the Phillies lost the series to the Mets because they didn’t hit enough, but the complete and utter failure of the bullpen is, well, puzzling. To the tune of an 11.37 ERA in 12.2 innings pitched over the four games. Despite the obvious lack of a fifth starter for the last two months, Thomson said, “I don’t think fatigue had anything to do with it.”
Added Dombrowski: “I’m really not sure what happened. I was as surprised as anybody.” But he would optimistically add, “More of an aberration.”
Regardless, closer Carlos Estevez, who pitched well after coming over in a trade with the Angels, but gave up Francisco Lindor’s sixth-inning grand slam series clincher in Game 4, and righty set-up man Jeff Hoffman are pending free agents.
“We like them both,” Dombrowski said, “but it’s hard for me to imagine you end up bringing them both back under the circumstances, because I would gather they’re both going to get offered long term, big money contracts. I don’t see us spending that type of money on two relievers.”
He didn’t envision a four-and-out in the playoffs, either. No one did, despite Thomson’s assertion that the Mets “were the hottest team in the baseball when we got them.”
That’s not a reason one can easily sell to the fanbase, even if the Phillies sold tickets at a rate surpassed this year only by the Dodgers and Yankees.
So in light of winning their first National League East division title since 2011, then going one short series and done to the Mets … what can Phillies’ bosses say to all those paying customers?
“It’s hard to win,” Dombrowski said. “There’s a lot of good clubs out there. And so you just have to be the club playing the best at the right time, maybe get a break or two there. That’s what makes winning feel so good, because it’s so hard.”
