Dave Dombrowski Has Failed This Off-Season
The Phillies have accomplished a lot on paper over the past 2 seasons. They won the Division twice and won 191 games. All of that has led to 2 wins…
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA – JUNE 24: Philadelphia Phillies president of baseball operations David Dombrowski looks on before a game between the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Mets at Citizens Bank Park on June 24, 2023 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
(Photo by Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images)The Phillies have accomplished a lot on paper over the past 2 seasons. They won the Division twice and won 191 games. All of that has led to 2 wins in the playoffs. They bowed out with very little fight in each of the past 2 post-seasons, and Phillies fans were starting to lose patience.
There was a brief glimmer of hope. For 2 weeks, everyone in the MLB world told you Bo Bichette was coming to the Phillies. If you listen to Dave Dombrowski, they even thought he was going to be a Phillie. What did Bo Bichette do? He took the Phillies' offer, leveraged it to secure a different deal for more money per year from the Mets, and spurred the Phillies without ever letting them respond.
It kind of broke Phillies fans. The fanbase is unhappy. They look at a lineup that is mostly the same as the one that sputtered out the past 2 seasons, and ask themselves why should they should believe in them in 2026.
Dave Dombrwoski has failed to improve this team. After the Dodgers series, it became abundantly clear they needed some big changes. They failed to do that. The lineup is mostly the same, with the same changes at the margins they made the past two off-seasons.
Other Teams Did Not Sit On Their Hands
The Dodgers won the World Series. They went out and got better. The Mets saw their core fail two seasons in a row, they went out and flipped it on it's head.
The Phillies added a project in Adolis Garcia, and made 1 really good move in the bullpen. But they looked at the lineup that failed 3 post-seasons in a row, and brought back everyone. The one thing they are changing is Nick Castellanos, who ironically has hit better than most of the team the past 2 post-seasons.
Dombrowski came here billed as a guy who builds a championship team. But looking back, he has made more bad moves than good ones. Signing Kyle Schwarber was a masterclass. Trea Turner was a good move. But the contracts to Nick Castellanos, Taijuan Walker, and Aaron Nola are why this team was so rigid this offseason. They couldn't be in on the big names, because they are so close to the Luxury Tax already, and their owner isnt willing to race past it like the Dodgers and Mets.
I am not the only one who thinks this team is not good enough. The very fact that the Phillies pursued Bo Bichette tells you they agree. They were ready to jettison Alec Bohm and JT Realmuto because they also think this team needed a major shakeup. But he spurned them, they panicked, and they decided to just run it back because they had no backup plan.
The Phillies Are Going In The Wrong Direction
This is still a talented team. The Phillies will win 90 games again and compete for the NL East title. But there is no reason to believe things will go differently in October.
They are still rolling out Bohm, Marsh, Stott, and Realmuto when there is more than enough evidence they won't get the job done in October. There will still be at least 2 platoons, with Marsh and Stott being incapable of hitting lefties. They are still stuck with an average bat at a premium power position at 3B.
Unless Justin Crawford is a star, this lineup has gotten worse than it was last year. With Ranger Suarez gone, and Zack Wheeler recovering from a major medical crisis, this rotation has gotten worse. The bullpen is the only place you can look and say they got better. Even that is a question with Matt Straham gone and them pinning their hopes on a Jose Alvarado bounce-back.
Even if you think they did not get worse, they certainly did not improve. And in this MLB, there is no excuse for that. They were already behind the Dodgers, and that gap has grown. But more than just that, they needed to make changes just to shake up what is clearly a stale core.
Bo Bichette might not have made them even with the Dodgers, but it would be something. Instead, Dave Dombrowski did next to nothing. He is "content."
This is not a one-year thing, or one-offseason thing. Since they signed Trea Turner, Dombrowski consistently failed to address the issues with the lineup. They needed a right-handed power hitter. He signed Max Kepler. They needed more help this off-season, the only addition is Adolis Garcia, another hitter like Castellanos who swings at everything and stirkes out a ton.
If Dombrwoski is content with this roster, maybe it is time to find a new person to run the team. Because it is plainly obvious what they have is not good enough.
