The frame of reference that Dave Dombrowski adopted at the trade deadline left no room for the conversations he would’ve been forced into this week.

The Phillies’ president of baseball operations insistently defended the choice not to add starting pitching at the trade deadline. The considerations were of cost vs. opportunity, as they always are, and in not conflating the Dodgers’ decision to rent Tarik Skubal in a prospect blockbuster for the ways in which the Phillies sought to improve.

Instead, Dombrowski’s lens focused only on the top of the rotation. He saw All-Stars Jesus Luzardo and Cristopher Sanchez with a resurgent Zack Wheeler. He saw improvements in Aaron Nola that he was right in believing would endure. He saw what he hoped was a sea change from rookie Andrew Painter that could sustain. Again, correct.

So he sat on his hands.

“Compared to some other clubs, and I’ve said this all along, you always want to get better at every position,” Dombrowski edified. “But we feel that if we can make it to the postseason, our starting rotation’s in really solid shape. Other people looking to add to their top three. In our situation here, that really wasn’t a necessity.”

What Dombrowski didn’t foresee, for all of his decades in baseball, was what came down the pike Tuesday: Luzardo placed on the injured list with left shoulder stiffness. He is eligible to be activated on the final day of the regular season and has pledged to do everything he can to be a factor in the postseason.

With one of those top three down, the Phillies face a second and third turn of the rotation with no starting option. That’s just to get in the tournament and earn the dilemma of filling up to 27 high-pressure innings of a Wild Card series of up to 45 in a Wild Card set while also protecting the multi-year investment they’ve made in Luzardo by not unduly endangering him.

The fault for making the regular season’s final two weeks more dramatic than they need to be is Dombrowski’s inability to manage the bottom end of the roster. And the dearth of any semblance of pitching depth is the biggest error.

The final verdict on Dombrowski’s trade-deadline exploits has yet to be written.

Luis Arraez is hitting 30 points lower as a Phillie than he did as a Giant, though fears of a defensive apocalypse brought by the positional cascade around the second baseman have proven unfounded. Caleb Killian has mostly been hurt. Brooks Raley has been bad enough to lose the trust of interim manager Don Mattingly in anything approaching leverage.

Those assessments are subject to change in the postseason. But what is clear is that Dombrowski erred in doing nothing to shore up the organization’s starting depth short of plucking Nestor Cortes off his couch for a stint that appears destined to be inconsequential in the best-case scenario.

And so the Phillies approached Wednesday’s two-game-series finale in Washington losers of eight of 12. They are a half-game behind the Cubs, who are doing everything they can to cede home-field advantage in a Wild Card Series, and just one up on the surging Padres. A decidedly mediocre Arizona remains four back in the loss column, sparing the Phillies any real peril of missing the postseason.

But with 10 games to go starting with Thursday’s visit to New York and the Mets, the Phillies don’t know who’s going to start potentially a third of them.

Dombrowski has made the least of the great hand he’s been dealt: Sanchez has started 31 games; Nola, rough as it was early, 30; Luzardo 29. Wheeler, once he returned from thoracic outlet surgery, has made all 25 schedule starts. Painter has made 23 appearances, two of them requiring an opener.

Those five starters have accounted for 136 of 151 starts. It’ll be 138 of 153 by the time Saturday’s conundrum surfaces. That’s 90.2 percent.

Cut out two times that Painter needed an opener and the ill-fated four-start Taijuan Walker experience, and Phillies managers have had to find just nine starts from anybody else all year.

That minuscule workload should make finding a sixth or seventh option easy, right? Nope.

Despite making a point that people were calling the Phillies about de facto sixth starter Alan Rangel at the deadline, his 5.50 ERA in 21 Triple-A starts about matches the 5.88 he’s posted in seven games in the majors.

Brian Keller made his MLB debut, was designated for assignment and is back to tossing a 6.35 ERA in Triple A. Old friend Kolby Allard, who was great with the Guardians last year, got rocked in the bigs to start the year and has continued to struggle with a 5.54 ERA in 15 games in Allentown.

That the Phillies couldn’t improve that bunch of near-majors options short of the flier on Cortes and stretching out a rehabbing Tanner Banks is either a lack of vision or creativity.

Kyle Backhus, recalled by the Phillies to fill Luzardo’s spot after they initially promoted Grant Holman instead, is not a multi-inning option, his 46 appearances between Triple A and the big leagues this year covering 45.1 innings.

That’s to say nothing of what a lack of depth options among the starters might have done to burden relievers like Orion Kerkering and now Jonathan Bowlan, who now appear to be showing the strain.

Dombrowski was right about the top of the rotation. Since his July 31 recall, Painter has gone 2-1 with a 3.58 ERA and is averaging more than five innings per start. Nola has a 2.38 ERA in nine starts over the same timespan. In July, the idea of either pitching in the postseason inspired trepidation. Now it sparks something frighteningly close to confidence.

But the Phillies have to get to October. And they’ll rely on Backhus, Banks, Chase Shugart, Mattingly’s well-worn path to the mound and the hopes that neither the Brewers nor Rays have much to play for next week. It’s a position that so easily could’ve been avoided.

Contact Matthew De George at mdegeorge@delcotimes.com.