The Philadelphia Phillies season ended on a low note with a loss to the Miami Marlins, but the Phillies were in offseason mode before game time on Sunday, parting ways with multiple members of the coaching staff before first pitch.
Ahead of the Phillies’ final game of 2021, MLB.com’s Todd Zolecki reported that the Phillies had fired hitting coach Joe Dillon and infield coach Juan Castro. As a result, assistant hitting coach Pedro Guerrero will be out of a job as well, as the next hitting coach will hire an assistant of their choosing.
Dave Dombrowski began making sweeping changes to the Phillies front office and player development months ago
It’s not surprising that the Phillies didn’t wait until the season was officially over to start purging their organization; president of baseball operations, Dave Dombrowski, has been firing and hiring throughout the second half of the season. At the end of the summer, Dombrowski made sweeping changes to the front office, removing Bryan Minniti and Scott Proefrock from their positions as general managers. Preston Mattingly, formerly of the Padres, was announced as the new head of Phillies player development.
Ironically, Dombrowski himself was removed from his last position before the season ended. In September 2019, the Red Sox fired him during a Sunday Night Baseball game against the Yankees at Fenway Park.
What will the Phillies do this offseason?
The Phillies have a lot of work to do this offseason to improve before 2022. They need to completely overhaul their bullpen, upgrade their starting rotation, make game plans for struggling young players like Alec Bohm and Scott Kingery, and retain or replace impending free agents like Andrew McCutchen and Hector Neris. This is to say nothing of the internal work they need to do to build a functional farm system.
While the Phillies did not win the final game of the season or reach the playoffs, they do finish this season with a winning record, their first season above .500 since their 2011 division title.
The Phillies season is officially over, but Dombrowski’s scouring of his new organization has only just begun.