This coming season for the Philadelphia Phillies has to be anything but a step back for the club. The same team that finished 2024 with 95 wins, its highest total since 2011, is also at a fork in the road with where the franchise is headed. The roster has proven successful, but not enough to get them to the peak.
More work needs to be done to fill out the roster best suited for a World Series run. The stars of today are aging with lingering expiring contracts. The sand in the hourglass can't pass with another wasted season.
The club added pitchers Jordan Romano (one-year, $8.5 million) and Jesús Luzardo (est. $6 million arbitration) and brought in veteran outfielder Max Kepler (one-year, $10 million) to plug the holes in the current roster. The Phillies are banking on their acquisitions panning out, but it doesn't come with any certainty.
Phillies mistakenly throw in the towel on their offseason roster shakeup
President of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski has kept his cards close to the vest this offseason with little commitment to a big splash in free agency, per MLB.com's Todd Zolecki. The lack of "going for it" and the choice to throw in the towel is a mistake that could haunt them if the Phillies freefall again in 2025.
“We really like our club,” Dombrowski said last week, per Zolecki. “Now, can it get better? Yes. But if that’s the positional player club we go into Spring Training with, we feel very good about it.”
The Phillies have been receiving calls this offseason for potential trades so an opportunity could present itself if the deal is too good to pass up. FanGraphs projects their payroll at $307.6 million putting them above the fourth tax threshold and $47.5 million in tax penalties. This means if the front office isn't looking to sign players, trades have to be the option going forward. All the talk of shaking up the roster has fallen flat with disappointment.
The Los Angeles Dodgers may not be a perfect template for smart spending, but their blueprint of deferring money creates flexibility. The Phillies have limited money committed beyond player's contract years, so the flexibility is there if the plan of spending "stupid" money is still what they want.
The payroll has shaped their decisions about the roster and its limitations. It has been the plan of the Phillies coming off the failure of the 2024 NLDS. There was just the hope among fans that more massive signings would be the storyline and not the thought that this isn't good enough.