Phillies' deadline quest feels hopeless after Dodgers' Tarik Skubal trade, but they can't give up

Baseball fans were anything but shocked on Saturday when the juggernaut Los Angeles Dodgers added even more riches in the form of ace of aces Tarik Skubal. Onlookers across the baseball world increasingly view the game as rigged, with the Dodgers destined to capture a third straight World Series title. If the game seems rigged, why bother trying? For the Philadelphia Phillies, there’s no path forward other than to try.

First things first: the Dodgers are not an inevitability. Yes, they do have the best chance of any team to win it all. However, a lot has to go right, even for a super-team, to win a World Series. Just last year when Los Angeles took home their second consecutive title, they came mere inches away from being walked off in Game 7, and it took their weakest hitter mashing a game-tying home run in the ninth off jeff Hoffman to even send things to that point. If that alternate reality had happened, there would be no reason to complain about a potential three-peat, as the monster would have just been slain the previous autumn.

With that being said, it is understandable why 29 other fanbases are miffed. The Dodgers run the highest payroll in the sport (only three spots ahead of the Phillies) and are continuing to pile even more money onto their books. On top of that, they have a top-five ranked farm system and a seemingly limitless supply of productive role players coming up the ladder.

Simply put, they excel at every aspect of the game. They pony up for top-tier free agents, routinely get the better end of trades, and draft and develop young players extraordinarily well. And yet, this is less of a reason to be angry with the Dodgers, and more of a call to question the competency of other organizations. With better decision-making, could the Phillies not be the Dodgers?

The Phillies have all the tools to be the Dodgers if they could just be competent

The Phillies have splashed plenty of money around in recent years, with far less to show for their efforts. Kyle Schwarber and Zack Wheeler look like future Hall of Famers, but Nick Castellanos and Taijuan Walker were released before the end of their deals, while longtime ace Aaron Nola is barreling towards that same fate.

The same could be said for their performance in drafting and developing, as recent first-rounders Andrew Painter, Aidan Miller and Justin Crawford have all failed to materialize into anything useful thus far, while the minor league system as a whole has turned out very few productive youngsters.

Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman has an uncanny ability to turn other teams’ trash into treasure, with key pieces of championship rosters Evan Phillips and Max Muncy, among others, having been picked up off the scrapheap. All-Star reliever Jeff Hoffman was a nice find for the Phils, but outside of him they’ve shown very little aptitude for revitalizing diminished assets.

All of this is to say that the Dodgers are the envy of the baseball world not because of lucky breaks, but more so due to excellence in every facet of roster building; something the Phillies cannot boast. Despite the chasm between front office performances, the delta between the Phillies and the Dodgers is not insurmountable.

Just last postseason, the Phillies and Dodgers locked horns in the National League Division Series where the Dodgers prevailed in four games. However, it wasn’t a David and Goliath matchup, and if it weren’t for the Phillies tripping over their own feet, they certainly could have advanced.

A Nick Castellanos baserunning blunder here, a Jhoan Duran bases-loaded walk there. Sprinkle in a bit of bad luck with a blown strike three call inflicted upon Cristopher Sánchez, and Orion Kerkering turning his brain off when it mattered most, and all the ingredients were there for a gut-wrenching series loss.

So what should the takeaway be from that ill-fated playoff series? Certainly not that the Dodgers spent their way past the Phillies. On the contrary, if the Phils had simply tightened up the screws, it could very easily have been L.A. crying the blues.

That should inform the mindset for this season not just for the Phillies, but the other 28 aggrieved teams in Major League Baseball as well. The Dodgers may have a leg up, but they certainly don’t have a free pass. One or two serious injuries or declines in performance from star players and they’ll find themselves back on the same level as everyone else.

The Phillies need to go for it this year not in spite of the Dodgers, but because of them. If the Phillies were better at developing young talent, identifying undervalued players, or spending more wisely on veterans, they wouldn’t be watching their World Series window close. Unfortunately, the Phillies, like so many other teams, are nowhere close to the Dodgers intellectually, so they need to do everything they can to maximize their current opportunity. Who knows when the next one will come along?

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