Pencils down!
The MLB Trade Deadline has come and gone, and teams across baseball must go the rest of the way without acquiring talent from opposing clubs.
For the sputtering Phillies, who still own baseball's best record, the final results following four deals were as follows:
IN: OF Austin Hays, RH RP Carlos Estévez, LH RP Tanner Banks, minor-league RH SP Seth Johnson, minor-league RH P Moisés Chace.
OUT: OF Cristian Pache, RH RP Seranthony Domínguez, LH RP Gregory Soto, minor-league RH SP George Klassen, minor-league LH SP Samuel Aldegheri, minor-league IF William Bergolla.
Phillies President of Baseball Operations Dave Dombrowski has assembled a star-studded roster that, in the eyes of most, did not need an additional injection of high-profile talent. The Phillies believed they needed to find a few meaningful upgrades around the edges of their roster, and did so without dipping into their collection of prized prospects. The team held onto each of Andrew Painter, Aidan Miller, Justin Crawford, Starlyn Caba, Mick Abel and Eduardo Tait.
The Phils did cough up two intriguing starting pitching prospects in Klassen and Aldegheri in order to land Estévez, but received one back for Soto in the form of Johnson, while also adding a young arm to their system in Chase in the deal with the Orioles. Adding Banks came at the cost of Bergolla, a young infielder with strong contact skills but little to no power who was in High-A. The Hays acquisition only came at the cost of two major leaguers who were likely on their way out anyway in Domínguez and Pache.
As far as changes at the major-league level, the team made clear upgrades going from Pache to Hays and Domínguez to Estévez, while opinions on the Soto-to-Banks transition vary.
Pache's days in Philadelphia had appeared to be numbered for quite a while before he was officially sent to Baltimore last week. The 25-year-old was a defensive specialist on a team that believes it has a more skilled center fielder in Johan Rojas and has not been able to hit any pitching in 2024, posting a .202/.288/.269 slash line in 118 plate appearances for the Phillies this season.
Pache's rare starts almost exclusively came against left-handed pitchers, which most Phillies outfielders had struggled against for most of the season. Hays' strongest skill is his ability to hit lefties, and during his time in Baltimore in 2024, he posted a .328/.394/.500 line against them. Dombrowski and Phillies manager Rob Thomson quickly asserted that Hays is more than a platoon bat. They believe the 29-year-old is an everyday player and have treated him as such so far.
"He's a good hitter," Dombrowski said Friday after trading for Hays. "We think he can hit left-handed and right-handed pitching."
Hays was 2-12 at the plate in his first three games with the team, with two of those games coming against right-handed starters. But just moments after Dombrowski reasserted his belief in Hays' capability of being effective against right-handed pitchers on Tuesday night, Hays launched a three-run shot -- his first home run with the Phillies -- off of New York Yankees right-hander Will Warren.
There is no question that Hays represents a massive upgrade from Pache at the plate against pitchers on both sides. The worst-case scenario is that he slots into their lineup against southpaws but fails to impress against right-handers, and giving up the struggling Domínguez to facilitate that improvement was a no-brainer. But Dombrowski and co. opted not to add another bat to the outfield mix, and that puts a whole lot of pressure on Hays to live up to the team's expectations against righty arms.
Once a mainstay of the Phillies' bullpen, Domínguez fell out of favor as he continued to fall behind in counts and allow home runs. Thomson simply was not going to be able to trust him in any remotely critical situation in October -- and it was even becoming more difficult for the skipper to justify using Domínguez in crucial spots in regular season games.
In Estévez, the Phillies have the best right-handed reliever moved at this year's trade deadline. The price for a rental was steep, but Dombrowski said the team prioritized relief-pitching targets' ability in the present over team control -- and there is no doubt that Estévez has what it takes to get big outs in October, perhaps even in the ninth inning.
As the Los Angeles Angels' closer, Estévez posted a 2.38 ERA and 0.73 WHIP in 34.0 innings pitched -- converting 20 of 23 save opportunities, including each of his previous 14 -- and held all hitters to a .490 OPS. Estévez retired 53 of the final 58 batters he faced as a member of the Angels.
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Dombrowski and Thomson have each made it a point not to designate Estévez as the team's official closer, but it certainly sounds like he is in line for the majority of save opportunities moving forward. Slotting him into the ninth inning will allow Thomson to be aggressive in his usage of high-powered arms such as Jeff Hoffman, Matt Strahm, José Alvarado and Orion Kerkering earlier in games. That benefit could come into focus in October.
The Phillies pulled off two somewhat surprising moves within minutes of each other and right before the deadline passed, acquiring one left-handed reliever in Banks and trading another in Soto. Soto, acquired by the Phillies following his All-Star campaign as the closer for the Detroit Tigers in 2022, failed to live up to the expectations set for him in Philadelphia. After Soto had accumulated 95.2 innings pitched with the team -- including a few rough outings in high-leverage spots last week following an impressive few months -- Phillies brass decided Banks was preferable to his younger, harder-throwing counterpart.
"We've liked Banks for a long time," Dombrowski said Tuesday evening. "We thought he was a better fit for our bullpen at this time than Soto was."
Soto is younger than Banks, throws harder and has a much more impressive track record on the big-league mound. So what made Banks the better fit? Likely his ability to remain in the strike zone. When Soto is able to harness his stuff, he is extremely dangerous, but far too often during his time with the Phillies, he would lose his command and fail to throw enough strikes to be relied upon.
Banks does not have the velocity that Soto does, but his slider makes him equally difficult for left-handed hitters to face -- lefties have combined to post a .184/.229/.263 line against him in 2024 -- and he is considerably more trustworthy when it comes to command. Banks has walked 2.8 batters per nine innings this season, substantially lower than Soto's figure of 5.1.
Dombrowski's approach to this year's trade deadline hammered home what has been a core philosophy throughout his legendary career as a baseball executive: teams win when their stars perform. The Phillies have plenty of those, and now that the deadline has passed, it is on them to lead the club to that World Series title they've been chasing after since 2008.
So, how does Dombrowski feel about this group headed into the stretch run?
"I like our ball club," he said with a smile.
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