Bill Streicher
After being eliminated by the New York Mets in the NLDS last week, the Phillies will hold their season-end press conferences Tuesday at Citizens Bank Park, with president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski speaking first, followed by manager Rob Thomson.
This is certainly not a full list of questions that the two will be asked, but here are eight items that need to be answered Tuesday morning.
1. What Happened At The Trade Deadline?
This one obviously will be Dombrowski's to answer. Tanner Banks was fine as a bullpen depth piece, but the two major additions didn't prove to have the impact that the Phillies had hoped for.
- Carlos Estévez: The Phillies gave up a pretty decent package of pitching prospects in George Klassen and Sam Aldegheri to acquire Estévez as a rental reliever. The thought was that he would be the icing on the cake to a deep bullpen. Instead, he showed some concerning signs down the stretch, and was hit hard in three postseason appearances, including allowing what was essentially a series-ending grand slam to Francisco Lindor.
- Austin Hays: On multiple occasions, the Phillies gave Hays an opportunity to seize the starting left field job. But he spent time on the injured list with a hamstring injury and then a kidney infection, before also missing the final two games of the regular season with back soreness. He went 0-for-3 with two strikeouts in Game 3 of the NLDS, before effectively being benched for Weston Wilson in Game 4. Will a full offseason help Hays to get back on track, or with a projected arbitration number of $6.4 million is he a possible non-tender candidate?
Rob Thomson talks about Austin Hays’ night and the possibility of someone else starting in left field for Game 4 @PhilliesNation @OnPattison pic.twitter.com/XH8ZjJLF9L
2. Will Rob Thomson's Full Staff Be Back?
Given that the Phillies announced Thomson will be speaking Tuesday, one would assume he will return as manager. There's not really a reason to believe that he wouldn't be back.
Thomson is signed through the 2025 season. It will be interesting to see if he returns as a lame duck, or if the Phillies tack on another year at some point this offseason.
What's more intruiging in the immediate future will be whether Thomson's entire staff from 2024 will be back.
Pitching coach Caleb Cotham is seen as a rising star, having gained the respect of veterans Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola, while presiding over the development of arms like Cristopher Sánchez, Ranger Suárez and Jeff Hoffman. It's hard to imagine him going anywhere.
What about hitting coach Kevin Long? The Phillies were so happy with Long's work in his first season on the job that they gave him a contract extension through 2025 after reaching the World Series in 2022. His presence helped the Phillies to lure Kyle Schwarber and Trea Turner in free agency.
The guess here is Long will be back, but even great hitting coaches can sometimes have shelf lives. Assistant hitting coach Jason Camilli wasn't brought back after 2023. Do the Phillies believe that continued issues with chasing pitches out of the zone and being too reliant on home runs are just a product of roster construction, or something that could be improved with a different voice?
3. Did The Phillies Take Their Foot Off The Gas Too Much?
It was apparent pretty early in 2024 that the Phillies were going to be back in the postseason for the third consecutive season. Perhaps too early for their own good.
Obviously, the easiest contrast to point to is that the Phillies went 62-34 before the All-Star Break, and just 33-33 after a franchise-record eight players were selected to the Midsummer Classic. But the Phillies had gone into a bit of a tailspin prior to the All-Star Game.
Dombrowski was very candid in a conversation with The Athletic's Jayson Stark in early September about hitting a bit of a midseason wall.
"Most of all, though, Dombrowski wondered if maybe they’d all gotten too comfortable after such a dominant first half," Stark wrote. "The Phillies had such a big lead by the middle of June, they seemed to start prioritizing what they could do to keep their core healthy for October. So Dombrowski admits he has asked himself if that possibly sent the wrong message.
“I don’t know,” Dombrowski told Stark. “Maybe we set the tempo somewhere. Maybe we started looking at the long term rather than the short term. But I’m not sure about that."
The flip side of that is this is a team with quite a few players on the wrong side of 30 that had just gone on two extended postseason runs. If the Phillies had gone 110% all season, they likely would have run out of gas.
Nonetheless, it will be interesting to see what adjustments are made to the approach next season if the Phillies get off to a similarly hot start.
4. What Happens To Youngish Position Players?
They may still affectionally be referred to as "the Daycare" by Phillies fans, but Alec Bohm, Bryson Stott and Brandon Marsh are all veterans at this point. Bohm is 28, Stott is 27 and Marsh will turn 27 in December.
And yet, there are questions with each of the three moving forward.
- Bohm was an All-Star for the first time in 2024, and drove in 97 runs for the second year in a row. However, after posting an .830 OPS in the first half of the season, Bohm had a .681 OPS after the All-Star Break. He's continued to struggle with controlling his emotions when things aren't going well, and Thomson elected to start Sosa over him in Game 2 of the NLDS. For what it's worth, Bohm said after the Phillies were eliminated by the Mets that he expects to be back in 2025, his penultimate year of arbitration eligibility.
Alec Bohm on if he’s at a crossroads: “No, I know where I’ll be next year.” @OnPattison @PhilliesNation pic.twitter.com/MzCAMAf9a8
- Stott regressed at the plate in 2024, hitting .245 with a .671 OPS. That was disappointing after he hit .280 with a .747 OPS in 2023. The long at-bats where he wore opposing pitchers down by fouling pitches off happened much less frequently. Stott still has three remaining seasons before free agency, and provides tremendous defensive value at second base, where he posted seven defensive runs saved this past season. Whether the Phillies would view him as highly if he needed to play somewhere other than second base would be interesting to know.
- Marsh absolutely has a place in this league, because he hits right-handed pitchers at a high clip and is an excellent corner outfielder, who is also capable of playing center field. But as we wrote over the weekend, he may swing and miss too much to be a good fit moving forward as a secondary piece in the Phillies lineup.
Brandon Marsh May Not Fit What Phillies Need From Secondary Lineup Pieces - @OnPattison https://t.co/Tz8bgULMMe
5. Does Trea Turner Remain At Shortstop Moving Forward?
Turner said after Game 4 against the Mets that he believes he started to get better defensive results in the second half of the season, and still thinks his long-term defensive future is at shortstop.
"Yeah, for sure," Turner said. "I feel like early on I was kinda bad again. But, I think the second half of the year, I really played some good defense. I just felt more confident. I felt better throwing the ball. I felt like I made better decisions.
"You know, I made a couple errors here and there in the second half, but I just feel like overall I was making plays that I didn't make before," Turner added. "Going back to last year and trying to kinda process what [infield coach] Bobby [Dickerson] was trying to teach me and trying to work on that, I think in the second half, that was starting to click a little bit. I was starting to be more reactionary than thinking about what to do in what situation and what not."
Since joining the Phillies, Turner has -26 defensive runs saved and -8 outs above average at shortstop. Among qualified shortstops, Turner is third in throwing errors (18), and second in both fielding errors (22) and total errors (40) over the last two seasons.
Do the Phillies agree with Turner about remaining at shortstop, or could they try to talk him into a shift to second base? If Turner were to go to second base, would Stott just shift back to his natural position of shortstop? Last year, the Phillies quickly dismissed the idea of flipping Turner and Stott. It might be harder to move forward with the status quo this year, although that doesn't mean it won't happen.
6. What Does The Future Hold In The Bullpen?
Estévez is a free agent, and while he was a very likable guy, the overall return on the field was underwhelming. The 31-year-old seemed to realize after his struggles in Game 4 that the business realities don't guarantee he'll be back in 2025, even if he would like to be.
“I mean, hopefully. It would be great,” Estévez said of whether he would like to be back with the Phillies. “But let’s see, you know how it is.”
Hoffman had a 40.50 ERA in three postseason appearances, a disastrous finish to his contract year. With that said, he had a 2.28 ERA in 122 regular-season appearances for the Phillies over the last two seasons, and has repeatedly expressed a desire to remain in Philadelphia.
Jeff Hoffman: “Yeah, it sucks. All-Star wasn’t one of my goals, World Series was.” @PhilliesNation @OnPattison pic.twitter.com/K5aMhQVg9L
José Alvarado is due $9 million in the final guaranteed year of his contract. After he posted a 4.09 ERA across 66 games this season, do the Phillies still believe that Alvarado can be a high-leverage reliever on a World Series-caliber team?
The biggest question is probably going to be whether Dombrowski continues to build a bullpen that goes matchup based late in games, or whether two straight postseason meltdowns by the arm barn will compel him to trade for a star closer.
If the Phillies Decide They Need an Elite Closer, This May Be the Offseason To Do It - @OnPattison https://t.co/aRjoFide6w
7. Will The Phillies Pursue Any Extensions This Offseason?
In mid-June, Ranger Suárez was off to a 10-1 start and looked like an early NL Cy Young Award favorite. At that time, Dombrowski was asked by Phillies Nation's Destiny Lugardo about the possibility of trying to sign him beyond the 2025 season, which he will become a free agent after.
“Of course you would love to have a Ranger Suarez in your organization for years to come,” Dombrowski said. “We usually do not discuss contract extensions during the season because you don’t want it to be a distraction. The one thing out of it is that we would definitely like to have Ranger with us for a long time.”
But for as gutsy as Suárez's Game 4 start was, he clearly wasn't right during the second half of the season. He's never made more than 29 starts in a season. All parties involved might be best served letting Suárez's contract year play out and seeing if they'd like to extend their relationship.
Ditto for J.T. Realmuto, who is still a top-half-of-the-league catcher but will turn 34 before Opening Day 2025. Believe it or not, next season is already the final campaign of the five-year/$115.5 million deal he signed to return to the Phillies after testing free agency following 2020.
KYLE. SCHWARBER. 💣
pic.twitter.com/X4Dqfbi5a3
The most interesting one will be Kyle Schwarber, who has one season left on a four-year/$79 million deal that's been massively team-friendly. Schwarber has 131 home runs in three seasons with the Phillies, a staggering amount. He's coming off of his most complete offensive campaign, having benefitted greatly from a move to DH on a full-time basis. Schwarber is the defacto captain of the team. It's hard to think that in a year the Phillies won't want to keep Schwarber around. At the same time, he'll turn 32 in March, and needs to remain an elite power/on-base combination to justify being in the DH spot pretty much every game.
A year ago, Dombrowski didn't mince words at his year-end presser when asked about retaining Zack Wheeler beyond the 2024 season, with the Phillies ultimately extended their ace during Spring Training. Will he give a similar answer about one of the most prolific home run hitters to ever don red pinstripes?
8. Will Taijuan Walker Be Back In 2025?
Walker was not on the NLDS roster, with Kolby Allard instead given the long-man role. (The role didn't end up being needed in the series, so perhaps debates about the final roster spot were a little dramatic.)
2024 was a disaster for Walker, there's no way to sugarcoat it. He posted a 7.10 ERA and 6.94 FIP across 83 2/3 innings pitched.
But on multiple occasions during the second half of the season, it felt like Walker had pitched so poorly that the Phillies had to cut their losses and designate him for assignment. They never did. What you're left to conclude from that is that the most likely scenario — at least until the Phillies say otherwise — is that Walker will be at Spring Training next year and the Phillies will see if he can figure anything out this winter.
The problem with that is Walker has worked very hard since joining the Phillies, it just feels like Walker has hit a wall physically. There's only so much you can will yourself through when your body starts to fail you.
But there are two seasons remaining on Walker's four-year/$72 million deal. Are the Phillies ready to declare it a sunk cost?
