Yesterday, the trade deadline finally passed and the Philadelphia Phillies' overall addition were relatively subdued. They did manage to trade for a rental starting pitcher in Michael Lorenzen from the Tigers which shored up their rotation. The Phillies also swung a minor trade for switch-hitting utility man Rodolfo Castro to give them some depth.
For a team that is coming off a deep playoff run and that has real postseason ambitions in 2023, that is a pretty modest haul. Why didn't the Phillies do more? Well, the answer primarily is that this trade market sucked for buyers, but there were moves to be made and the Phillies ultimately didn't check all the boxes they were hoping to. More importantly, this was not a stereotypical Dave Dombrowski trade deadline where he swung for the fences.
Here are 2 trades the Phillies should have made and 1 we're glad they didn't
There are a lot of reasons why trades don't get done. Sometimes teams value players and prospects very differently. In other cases, playing in the same division or competing for the same fringe playoff chances makes matching up on a trade difficult to swallow. Finally, there are the moves that it just feel like a team missed the boat on without any rational explanation as to why they weren't more involved.
Time will tell as to whether or not the Phillies will regret not making the following moves. However, on the surface, these are moves that theoretically could have addressed their needs at the deadline for better or worse that they didn't get done.