The sound bite circulated widely through the Phillies mediasphere this week, that Rob Thomson hadn't watched any of the World Series.
"Not a pitch," the club's manager said from the MLB Winter Meetings down in Nashville.
The wound from that seven-game breakdown to the Diamondbacks in the NLCS, it's still fresh. It still hurts.
"Yeah, it was," Thomson reflected. "I was... I'm still upset about it, to tell you the truth."
But not discouraged.
The Phillies still have World Series aspirations, and while the signs right now seem to point to the returning roster being largely the same for 2024, that's hardly a bad thing to Thomson.
Bryson Stott and Alec Bohm will each be back with another full year of experience under their belts, Trea Turner will hopefully be fully settled into Philadelphia now, Kyle Schwarber will still be there hitting bombs at the top of the order, and of course, Bryce Harper will be there at first as the perennial MVP candidate (this time from Day 1). And that's not even to mention coming back with Aaron Nola and Zack Wheeler at the top of the rotation.
There might still be some fine-tuning to do, but the Phillies as they are now still very much have a shot.
"Because I think you're gonna get a better Stott, a better Bohm, the younger guys are gonna improve a little bit," Thomson said. "You got a full year of Trea, hopefully. And you're gonna have Harper for a full year, hopefully.
"I really like our roster. I felt like we had a great chance at winning a World Series, and it really hurts me that we didn't. It hurts me more than it did the year before when we did get to the World Series and didn't win it. I just thought we were good, we were good enough. I love our roster. I love the makeup of our club, the talent of our club. I think we're right there."
But after this past October, with those last couple of hurdles painfully yet to be cleared.
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The Winter Meetings were quiet for the Phils, and maybe outside of Juan Soto's trade to the Yankees, pretty quiet for baseball in general.
The biggest bit to come out of Nashville this week, as it concerns club president Dave Dombrowski and co., is that super agent Scott Boras has openly put out there that Harper is looking for a contract extension on his initial 13-year, $330 million megadeal signed back in 2019 – a contract that has since proven a massive bargain relative to the current market.
Outside of that, any current beats regarding the Phils right now revolve around the progression of players already in-house – like Johan Rojas' and Brandon Marsh's respective work at the plate – or the possibilities of smaller depth signings and trades to help fill out the back of the bullpen, the bench, and maybe a spot in the outfield depending on where the organization ultimately believes Rojas to be at development-wise.
You can never quite say the Phillies are done, not when Dombrowski is in the driver's seat of the front office, but the foundation is solidly in place.
And it does give the Phillies a shot to get back.
*H/T Baseball Isn't Boring podcast for capturing audio
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