The Philadelphia Phillies are inching closer to clinching a playoff berth following a resurgent 14-game stretch that has seen the team go 11-3 and improve their record to an MLB-best 90-59 with only two weeks remaining in the season.
While mediocre play and a rash of injuries during June and July left Phillies fans with a sour taste in their mouths, all signs point towards the Phillies running the table in the NL East in 2024 and making their third consecutive trip to play meaningful games in October.
The Phillies' success has been a testament to the depth and talent the team has assembled on its 40-man roster, with a rotating cast of players carrying the team at different points during the season. With injuries being a near constant over the last seven months, the work of president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski to keep the Phillies competitive should not be easily dismissed.
Dombrowski's work during the offseason to identify and sign MLB-ready pitching and positional depth to the upper minor league levels has been a major reason the team has been able to survive the loss of a handful of core players at various times this season. While the fifth spot in the starting rotation remains in flux, contributions from Spencer Turnbull, Tyler Phillips and Kolby Allard all season long have given the Phillies a shot in the arm when the team really needed it.
Phillies benefitting big time from Red Sox's massive miscalculation with Dave Dombrowski
When the Phillies hired Dombrowski to manage the day-to-day operations in December 2020, the organization was mired in a disappointing stretch of going nearly a decade without making a playoff appearance. Already boasting two World Series titles in his career as the general manager of the Miami Marlins and Boston Red Sox on his resume, Dombrowski had the track record of an executive who knew how to construct teams capable of reaching the postseason.
It was a shock to the baseball world when Dombrowski was fired by the Red Sox in September of 2019, less than a year removed from the team winning a World Series title. While the team was clearly failing to deliver on the promise of making it back-to-back championships with its play during the 2019 season, Dombrowski seemed like a surprising choice to become the scapegoat for the team's sudden fall from grace.
As Bob Nightengale from USA Today recently pointed out, the fortunes of the Red Sox and Phillies have swung in opposite directions since Dombrowski left Boston and was hired by the Phillies. The results are dramatic, as the Phillies have been to the World Series and are on the cusp of making it to the postseason for the third time in as many seasons. Meanwhile the Red Sox have gone 352-356 and had finished in last place on three occasions.
Five years ago today, the Boston Red Sox fired Dave Dombrowski. The Red Sox, 76-67 at the time, were 370-259, with three division titles and a World Series championship in four years under Dombrowski.
— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) September 9, 2024
Since the Dombrowski firing, the Red Sox are 352-356 with three last-place…
The Red Sox clearly made a giant mistake when they sent Dombrowski packing in 2019. At the time, Dombrowski was criticized for trading away Boston's top prospects for rental players at the deadline, and for overloading the roster with high salary contracts. Looking back on those deals, very few of the prospects Dombrowski traded, such as Anderson Espinoza, ever panned out at the MLB level, and it was Chaim Bloom who would ultimately trade impending free agent Mookie Betts in one of the most lopsided and franchise-altering trades in baseball history.
What has been clear since Dombrowski took over the big chair in the Phillies front office is that he learned some valuable lessons since being fired by the Red Sox. While Dombrowski has traded a handful of top prospects at the trade deadline over the last three years to improve the team's playoff chances, he's mostly shied away from trading away the majority of the Phillies' top prospects.
Sure, Dombrowski has made deals like Logan O'Hoppe for Brandon Marsh, and most recently George Klassen and Samuel Aldegheri for Carlos Estévez, but he has held onto top prospects like Aidan Miller and Justin Crawford instead of mortgaging the team's future. Dombrowski has learned a lesson in organizational sustainability during his current run in Philadelphia.
Dombrowski has shown an impressive touch as a talent evaluator as well. The last couple of years will go down as one of the best examples of stocking the farm system with organizational depth. Where would the Phillies be this season without contributions from players like Weston Wilson, Kody Clemens and Cal Stephenson? All three have exceeded in opportunities when core players have been sidelined by injuries.
Starting pitching? The Phillies benefited greatly at times this season with minor league free agents like Tyler Phillips and Kolby Allard providing the team with solid starts when injuries to Taijuan Walker, Spencer Turnbull and Ranger Suárez left voids in the starting rotation for weeks at a time. That next man up mentality has been pivotal to the Phillies' success.
While Dombrowski has done a decent job at signing free agents, he's not perfect, as evidenced by the recent failures of Taijuan Walker and Whit Merrifield to live up to their contracts. The additions of Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos to the Phillies' veteran core helped shape the current team into a perennial postseason contender. If Dombrowski can win another title with the Phillies, he'll likely be headed to Cooperstown as a Hall of Fame executive. If the Phillies are to win it all this season, 2024 could easily be considered his finest work in a career that stretches back nearly five decades.