May 21, 2021
Jonathan Dyer/USA Today Sports
Dave Dombrowski has a team to continue building this winter.
Dave Dombrowski’s past will meet up with Dave Dombrowski’s present and immediate future for three days this weekend.
It can be hard to remember since every year feels like a dog year of seven, but Dombrowski was part of the group that spent the fall of 2018 building one of the most dominant teams in history — the Red Sox squad who cruised to 108 regular season wins and dropped just three out of 14 games en route to the franchise’s fourth World Championship in 14 years.
Twelve months later, Dombrowski was out of Boston in a somewhat unceremonial fashion for a guy who has a deep baseball pedigree and a few rings on his fingers in favor of Chaim Bloom, the former Rays assistant GM who proceeded to tear things down – including trading perennial MVP candidate Mookie Betts — and now has Boston atop the AL East race with Memorial Day looming.
Meanwhile, Dombrowski’s Phillies team could be approaching a seasonal tipping point. They are near the top of the National League East despite the fact that almost every single indicator seems to be flashing warning signs as the season’s first major milestone holiday approaches.
Injuries are mounting up. The bullpen still has issues while some starters are inconsistent (Aaron Nola) or consistently bad (Chase Anderson). The defense is historically awful, especially in the infield. And the continuing problem of poor play on the road gives this team a ceiling that it will continue to crash up against unless it is corrected.
That is why it is so vital that Dombrowski and Sam Fuld, the general manager, need to start making some changes to the landscape now, not waiting until July. We’ve said this before in this spot that while history doesn’t normally work in a way that allows for many trades before late June, the current brass is going to have to swim upstream on that trend.
And what makes the challenge unique is that the Phillies are in a very strange spot. They have core parts — Bryce Harper, J.T. Realmuto, Zach Wheeler, Nola — that are in their prime and ready to contend. That is the unit that you would expect to be major factors on a team that could not just make October but could be dangerous when it gets there.
And yet, the rest of the roster isn’t close to worthy of playoff consideration. Aside from Alec Bohm, who is struggling but still has a pretty good future ahead, name a young player on this team that gets you excited moving forward? The sound you hear is crickets.
And the minor league system is barren. Bryson Stott, Mick Abel and Spencer Howard would all draw significant trade interest. (Howard’s return, however, could be low given his already daunting injury history.) Those are the three guys that would get attention from most teams, along with a guy like Bohm. Other than that, the cupboard is bare.
So the dilemma becomes do you somehow trade something out of that group with the realization that the 2024 or 2025 Phillies could be downright awful, but nobody will really care if 2021 and 2022 end up in playoff berths? If you look at Dombrowski’s past history, that has always been the trend line. In a large way, that’s why he’s not still in Boston.
After 10 years outside the playoffs, most Phillies fans would have little doubt on which way they would lean. And what also makes this tricky is the schedule between now and the end of June. The most daunting things on it are a Florida swing to Miami (which has owned the Phillies) and Tampa next week, followed by a West Coast trip to Los Angeles and San Francisco in the middle of June.
Those are the trips that could end up telling whether this is worth going all in for. If Philadelphia fades, then Dombrowski could be wise holding onto his capital in the minors and begin to sell off pieces that could be replaceable here (Rhys Hoskins could fit that last definition perfectly.) If they are still just hanging around, then the temptations will be there to go for it in this flawed division.
• Jean Segura could end up going down as one of the enigmatic figures in recent Phillies history. It is so easy to see the value he brings with his numbers. And yet, those number feels awfully damn hollow. And his outburst towards Joe Girardi on Sunday after committing a bad error shows his sense of the moment is not exactly something that meshes with a winning team.
• If the Phillies are so hellbent on making sure Howard stays at an innings limit, why isn’t he in the majors already? Any starts that he makes for the IronPigs right now is just wasting innings for down the road. Howard has proven he is stretched out and better than Anderson. If you want to team the two together per start, that works as well.
• When you have a no-hitter seemingly every other night, you have a problem Rob Manfred.
• Speaking of that, doesn’t it seem amazing that the Phillies have only been the victim of one no-hitter since Bob Forsch’s in 1978? It belongs to past-his-prime Josh Beckett back in 2014 when he was with the Dodgers on Memorial Day weekend. (The Indians, Mariners and Rangers have all been no-hit twice this season.)
As mentioned above, the Red Sox come in for three games starting on Friday night. Alex Cora’s second act as Boston manager has seen a resurgence with the Red Sox standing at 27-18 and a game up on the Yankees heading into the weekend. Boston can score: their 232 runs are the second most in baseball behind the Astros coming into the weekend.
After that, its four with the Marlins in Miami, two in St. Pete against the Rays and three in Cincinnati against the Reds. We’ve gone over how bad the Phillies have been against the Fish over the past three seasons ad nauseum. They’ve also struggled in interleague and saw their season come to an end last year at Tropicana Field. In other words, this stretch has red flags all over it.
Kevin hosts the “Working The Beat” podcast with Mike Kern, available on iTunes, Google Play and everywhere podcasts are heard. A regular on WIP, Kevin loves to interact with readers on Twitter. Follow him there at @KevinCooney.
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