PHILADELPHIA — About halfway through Dave Dombrowski’s 45-minute session with reporters that largely brushed aside the wreckage from a disappointing October and preached a status quo that has powered these Phillies to three straight postseason berths, the president of baseball operations said something without saying it.
He likes his roster. He believes in the manager and coaches who are guiding it. He spent five days meeting with various people to determine whether a deeper problem festered, or if the Phillies just endured poorly timed slumps in back-to-back Octobers. He answered questions Tuesday morning sounding like someone who knows he’s boxed into certain corners with this roster, but it is a roster that this season won the sixth-most games in franchise history. The Phillies again kept their players healthy. They had a Cy Young Award candidate. They had four Gold Glove Award finalists (Zack Wheeler, Bryce Harper, Bryson Stott, Brandon Marsh). They had eight All-Stars. They had two of the best left-handed hitters atop the lineup.
It was not enough. Dombrowski, a veteran executive not known for being passive in situations that call for change, played coy for most of those 45 minutes. It is Oct. 15 — not a time for Dombrowski to show his hand.
He talked so much about maintaining the status quo. So where can the Phillies upgrade this win-now roster?
“Well, I’m not really going to give you all those things at this point,” Dombrowski said. “Because I think it’s a situation where, then it’s easy to say, ‘Well, if you do this, then you’re getting rid of this player, right?’ I mean, the reality is we have a lot of good players. So I think we just have to be open-minded to exploring what’s out there for us. Talk to some clubs and see what ends up happening. That process hasn’t started. Sometimes you trade good players for good players.”
It’s not hard to read between those lines.
There will be changes; Dombrowski refused to outline his strategy less than a week after the Phillies were eliminated. And while Dombrowski will have to be creative and careful in tweaking this roster, it is difficult to imagine the Phillies retaining as much continuity as they did from 2023 to 2024.
It’ll just require some patience to see how the offseason unfolds.
For the second straight October, Dombrowski declined to hand Johan Rojas a starting job in the outfield and expressed confidence in Brandon Marsh emerging as an everyday player. He admitted it’s not likely the Phillies re-sign both Jeff Hoffman and Carlos Estévez, their two biggest impending free agents. He said it’s time to talk to J.T. Realmuto about catching fewer games. They still believe in Alec Bohm. Manager Rob Thomson, who had a year tacked onto his contract, opened the door to Kyle Schwarber batting lower in the lineup to create a different balance. He’s wondered if fatigue hampered the Phillies in July and August. He might pad the hitters’ schedules with more rest to begin the season.
“We have a good ballclub,” Thomson said. “This is a championship roster. It really is. Dave and the front office have done a great job. Now we haven’t gotten it done. I haven’t gotten it done. Do we make some tweaks for next year? We’ve already talked about it.”
Dombrowski reads and listens to most things said about his club. This is a habit he’s maintained throughout his decades in the sport. Something in the wake of last week’s Game 4 loss to the New York Mets in the National League Division Series caught his attention.
“Personally,” Trea Turner said, “I think we get ourselves out. I don’t think it matters who’s on the mound.”
This led to more substantive discussions Dombrowski had in the last five days.
“It’s a very enlightening comment,” Dombrowski said. “Because that is true at times, and other clubs know that. So we need to keep working with these guys where we can make the proper adjustments so they don’t keep doing those types of things.”
Maybe it has crystallized in a new offensive identity the Phillies hope to attain while keeping much of the same lineup.
“One thing I would like us to do, and that’s going to fall into (hitting coach) Kevin Long’s hands: I really would like us to use the whole field a little bit more at times,” Dombrowski said. “We became a pull-oriented club at times too much for me. In the postseason, when you look at it, a lot of our hits didn’t come the opposite way. And that’s something we’ve already talked about ourselves. Now, the hitters have to buy into that, too. They have to be in that position.”
Trea Turner’s comments after the Phillies were eliminated got Dave Dombrowski’s attention. (Bill Streicher / Imagn Images)
If implemented, this would run counter to modern baseball trends. Teams have valued pull-side power because it’s where the most reward lies. This season, the league had a .689 slugging percentage on balls hit to the pull side with a .435 slugging percentage on balls hit straightaway and to the opposite field. Teams do less damage when using the whole field.
Maybe a contact-based approach is returning to baseball. The run-scoring environment across the sport is depressed. These things tend to move in cycles. It sounds like a novel approach; applying it to a lineup of established hitters who are often stubborn in their ways is a challenge.
Dombrowski will be creative in pursuing roster upgrades. He has an opening in center field (or left, if the Phillies slide Marsh back to center). He could take one of his cheaper regulars — Marsh or Alec Bohm — and package them with a prospect to acquire a young, big-league hitter who is a better fit. The Phillies, according to multiple major-league sources, were willing to discuss every prospect but one in the farm system during trade talks in July. The exception: Andrew Painter.
But any additions — other than Juan Soto on one of the largest free-agent contracts in the history of the sport — will likely be ancillary to the current star hitters adopting a more consistent identity.
“We really have to get them to buy into using the entire field,” Thomson said. “I know everybody talks about chase rate. I think just doing that will cut down on the chase rate because you’re going to stay on the ball a little bit longer. You watch the playoff series. The Yankees game — I pulled up all their base hits. Everything was from gap to gap. And, if you do that, you have a chance to cover all pitches in any zone. You’re not going to be susceptible to off-speed away, especially.
“These guys are so strong. Our power guys, they can hit the ball out of any part of the ballpark. They just have to be able to stay on the ball.”
The Phillies extended manager Rob Thomson’s contract through 2026. (Brett Davis / USA Today)
Dombrowski came armed Tuesday with tidbits. Mets hitters, he said, chased more pitches than the Phillies did. The Phillies were middle-of-the-pack in chase rate this postseason. All true. This is about more than chasing pitches out of the strike zone. The Phillies are going to be aggressive. Dombrowski and Thomson would like to see them channel it through better methods.
But the Phillies have lacked a reliable offensive identity for almost two years. Long, one of the most respected hitting coaches in baseball, stresses being on time for the fastball. The Phillies excelled at hitting fastballs … until they didn’t.
The Phillies saw 48 percent fastballs — four-seamers or two-seamers — in the NLDS, a slight uptick from the regular season. But they hit .169 with a .282 slugging percentage against Mets fastballs. It was a jarring disruption; the Phillies have been a consistent offense against fastballs over the previous three seasons. They had seen 49 percent fastballs in 2022, then 49 percent in 2023 and 47 percent in 2024. They slugged .448, .464 and .454 against them in those seasons.
They crushed fastballs in the 2023 postseason, which ended in similar disappointment, to a .564 slugging percentage. They saw roughly the same rate of fastballs in the strike zone year to year.
They did not do damage on those pitches this October.
Realmuto saw 15 fastballs in the zone during the NLDS. He did not have a hit on one. Neither did Bohm, who saw in-zone fastballs on 10 of his 39 pitches. Marsh saw 52 pitches in the series and 17 of them were in-zone fastballs. He had one hit on an in-zone fastball, an infield single. Bryson Stott saw 24 fastballs in the strike zone out of his 61 total pitches. He had one hit, a single.
There was a clearer plan against Turner. Last postseason, he saw in-zone fastballs 25 percent of the time. He had eight hits — including three doubles and a homer — on those juicy fastballs. This time, against the Mets, Turner saw seven in-zone fastballs in 78 pitches (9 percent). He put two of them in play, both for routine outs.
Then, there’s Schwarber, who saw more fastballs in the zone this postseason than the previous two Octobers. He crushed those fastballs during the 2023 postseason. But, in this NLDS, he saw in-zone fastballs 36 percent of the time — 30 out of 84 pitches. He had two hits (a home run and a single) on those fastballs in his first two at-bats of the series. He did not have a hit on 28 subsequent fastballs in the zone.
But to the Phillies, Schwarber epitomizes the lineup ideal. He went to work last offseason to cut down on his strikeouts. He raised his batting average by 51 points. He improved against lefties because he used the whole field. That, however, forced him to sacrifice some power.
It is a trade the Phillies will ask their hitters to make.
“You talk about the lineup and different things,” Dombrowski said. “Well, sometimes it’s approaches too. Turner’s approach, we’re much more comfortable if he’s more of a line-drive, doubles hitter that hits the ball out of the ballpark some. Another example is Bryson Stott. For us, Bryson Stott should be an on-base type of guy. He’s a guy that we’re not looking to hit 20 home runs. He’s a guy that can work the count. He has a good eye, although he didn’t show it this year. That gives you a little more balance all of a sudden if Turner and Stott do more of that. Some of that can be internal for us.”
Some of it will be external. Dombrowski wouldn’t say that out loud Tuesday, and that is understandable. He won’t signal to other clubs any hint of fear that this window is closing, or that his owner has put immense pressure on the entire operation to deliver a championship. The Phillies like their roster. Of course, they do.
But there will be changes.
“It’s hard to win,” Dombrowski said. “There’s a lot of good clubs out there. You just have to be the club playing the best at the right time and maybe get a break or two there. That’s what makes winning feel so good. … We have the talent to win. And we can dissect it however we want. And I know you will. But we’re talented enough to win.”
(Top photo of Dave Dombrowski: Chris Szagola / Associated Press)
