A year ago, Dave Dombrowski sat before a microphone at Citizens Bank Park and had to appraise a Phillies team that won the National League East and crashed out in the NLDS to the Mets.
The culprits then were relatively clear: A 34-35 finish to the season, the lack of a fifth starter, trade-deadline deals that didn’t work out as planned, lots of talk about chase rates. The manager was in place, the roster was generally settled, so the Phillies would run it back, more or less, and hope.
A year later, the questions are the same, the volume louder. The Phillies again won the NL East. They again lost in the NLDS, this time to the Dodgers. And on Thursday, the Phillies’ president of baseball operations will face more or less the same questions.
Phillies manager Rob Thomson walks to the outfield during batting practice before Game 2 of the NLDS against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Oct. 6. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
The answers this time around cannot be the same. Or rather, the answers that presented themselves last year can’t be enacted so loosely this time around.
Dombrowski had ideas on how to fix the team a year ago, though for whatever reasons, they didn’t materialize. And so the Phillies started nine of the same 10 players on Opening Day in 2025 as they did in 2024, the one change Max Kepler for Johan Rojas.
The score is now three postseason failures in a row since the 2022 pennant, which weighs the scale more heavily against maintaining the status quo.
“I think we have to be open-minded to exploring what’s out there for us,” Dombrowski said on Oct. 15, 2024. “Talk to some clubs, and see what happens. Sometimes you trade good players for good players.”
Change for the sake of change is neither Dombrowski’s job nor his preference.
After the 2023 NLCS loss to Arizona, he wasn’t going to trade away players just to provide the illusion of action. The same held after the embarrassment meted out by the Mets, Dombrowski’s only major move the acquisition of Jesus Luzardo for prospects and one-year deals to the likes of Kepler and Jordan Romano, with varying degrees off success.
Even after a third successive postseason backslide, he won’t offload core members if the return isn’t right, in the same way the club Monday decided not to part ways with a under-contract manager in Rob Thomson in 2026 without a clear successor to replace him with.
But Dombrowski, who is fond of waving away questions about the Phillies’ championship window, has an opportunity presented via that same logic. When faced with those questions, Dombrowski loves to answer that championship windows only apply for players, not organizations. Such is his remit, to ensure that successive generations of prospects can replenish the big-league roster.
After a fourth consecutive trip to the postseason, the roster seems more stratified than ever. There are veterans who are going nowhere in the form of Bryce Harper, Trea Turner, Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola. To that group, you would add whichever combination of pending free agents J.T. Realmuto and Kyle Schwarber whose services the Phillies are able to retain.
At the other extreme are prospects who will soon join the mix.
Justin Crawford hit .334 in Triple A last year. Four years after being drafted in the first round, he should be in the major leagues on Opening Day.
Andrew Painter turns 23 in April. After 106 innings at Triple A in his first season since Tommy John surgery, it’s time for him to sink or swim in the bigs.
Aidan Miller, the first-round pick in 2023, reached Triple A this year. The expectation would be for him to start at third base by Opening Day 2027, collective bargaining next winter permitting.
It’s the generation in between that holds the most potential to change this franchise’s direction, players like Alec Bohm, Bryson Stott and Brandon Marsh. They are the most movable and they occupy valuable roster spots that can shift this club’s identity, if that’s seen as part of the team’s problem.
On their own, each is a solid major leaguer.
Bohm was an All-Star in 2024, Stott can be a Gold Glover at second base, Marsh is a solid outfielder. Bohm has been a middle-of-the-order bat throughout this playoff era. Stott hit .310 over the last two months of 2025. Marsh hit .303 from May 1 on.
All three are the kinds of players you need on teams that win 96 games. But the evidence doesn’t yet suggest they’re players that can lead to October success. None is the kind of player you’d trade away to make a point. That’s not how Dombrowski operates anyway.
But if the Phillies want a less all-or-nothing order for the postseason, they’re one means to implement that change.
Each has tradeoffs in determining his long-term status.
Bohm can be a free agent after 2026, reaching the kind of juncture where the team would want to negotiate a long-term deal or extract his trade value.
Luzardo can also be a free agent after 2026, and after the Phillies elected not to extend Ranger Suarez in a similar situation last winter and will likely see him walk into free agency this winter, a Luzardo deal might be higher priority.
Marsh and Stott are under club control through 2027. Miller is Bohm’s long-term replacement. Crawford is Marsh’s.
Bohm is a right-handed bat, perpetually in short supply for the Phillies, though he has never grown into a power bat. Dealing Marsh might relieve the left-handed backlog, particularly with Crawford coming up. It might make retaining either Kepler or Harrison Bader more plausible.
The Phillies need change. That much is clear from consecutive postseason shortfalls.
Yet there’s a sentiment within the fanbase that each individual change is not the right one. That feeling made it easy for the front office to bring back the same guys last year, and it would make it easy to give new deals to Schwarber and Realmuto, add the young guys ready to be promoted and hope things are different.
But Dombrowski is pad to make tough decisions and get creative with personnel management. Now is when it’s most desperately needed.
Contact Matthew De George at mdegeorge@delcotimes.com.