It appeared as though the Philadelphia Phillies were still open to potentially re-signing stud reliever Jeff Hoffman this offseason after he left for free agency. With the Phillies in need of bullpen reinforcements for 2025, Hoffman remained one of the best relief options available heading into the Winter Meetings.
However, on Monday, the Phillies surprised everyone by reeling in former Toronto Blue Jays star closer Jordan Romano on a one-year, $8.5 million deal. In doing so, it may have drastically changed the Phillies' plans with regard to their pursuit of Hoffman.
Signing Jordan Romano makes it sounds like the Phillies and Jeff Hoffman won't reunite
According to The Athletic's Matt Gelb and Ken Rosenthal, Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski revealed his thoughts on the current state of the bullpen following the addition of Romano (subscription required).
“We feel comfortable where we are,” Dombrowski said about the bullpen. “I’m not saying we won’t add. I never know what’s going to go. I never know that. But we’re comfortable where we are right now. If we feel we can help our club in other ways, we’re still open to that. But we feel good where we are in our bullpen.”
From that, it sure sounds like the Phillies are more than happy with their current makeup of relievers, and that their focus will now likely turn to addressing other needs for the rest of the offseason.
To further confirm that stance, Todd Zolecki of MLB.com indicated that Dombrowski said he’s comfortable moving forward without replacing both Hoffman and Carlos Estévez.
“We like our guys,” Dombrowski said, per Zolecki. “We think Kerkering is ready to take another step forward, we've got Strahm, we've got Alvarado, so really you have four back-end guys. We like Tanner Banks. Ruiz did a good job for us. I'm not saying that we would never add another guy, but I think if you've got four high-leverage relievers that we think we do, that's pretty good.”
On top of that, Dombrowski suggested that the front office’s main focus is now likely elsewhere.
“I’m not sure what else I would say is our priority, other than to get better,” Dombrowski said. “We're not going to force things to happen, to just get them done. We were a top-five offense in baseball last year … We have a good offensive team as it is. But we'll continue to try to get better, too, and we've had a lot of conversations with clubs, and I'm sure we'll continue to do that over the next few days.”
Phillies fans looking for a potential reunion with Hoffman will feel quite disappointed at this moment. However, we all know that Dombrowski knows exactly how to build a winning product on the field. So in this instance, we should trust his judgment on what will work best for Philadelphia for the rest of this offseason for them to have the most success going forward.