The Phillies 2026 season was not a bad season, yes I know we didn’t win the WS – I watched that. But we
started horribly and had the resilience to claw our way back to winning and the playoffs
had some great bounce-backs from Harper & Wheeler
saw some promising things from Crawford, Painter, & McFarlane
saw some of what this core team can do in August
We also saw some things that hold this team back
However promising Crawford & Painter were – they lost us some games and revealed that we don’t have the player development system to land Kevin McGonigle, Paul Skenes style impact players on the major league club. Aidan Miller may play for the Phillies in 2027. We may not see more from him than we did from Justin Crawford last year. Gage Wood may pitch for the Phillies in 2027 or 2028. He may pitch about like Andrew Painter at first. Our salvation is not going to come from the farm.
Dombrowski is still Dombrowski. In the battle of the season – he is capable of genius (Bader, Hill, Duran, Arraez). In the off season he is capable of both big & small misfires (Castellanos, Romano, Garcia, Walker, Kepler, and so many veteran utlility guys whose names I don’t want to remember). He will shop off the bargain shelf – in part because he doesn’t have the prospects to shop from the top shelf but he has big dreams. It’s been a while since he’s had a big off-season win (was it Schwarber?).
Brandon Marsh is amazing until he’s not and then he’s really not.
Every team has injuries – we had some this year (Keller, Garcia, Arraez) – we’ve had more notable ones in the past (Harper, Wheeler). Teams who keep older players longer may have more injuries. Time comes for catchers before it comes for pitchers. We are unlikely to be “injury proof” in 2027. Our depth will be tried and well, we aren’t that deep.
If this team is going to be successful in 2027 – it will depend on
a bounce back year from Trea Turner, & no big collapses or injuries from the others in the core (Harper, Schwarber, Wheeler, Sanchez, Luzardo, and Duran).
Dombrowski being more than his average lucky with a bat signing (for RF) & LHP relief signing. And keeping his mid-season prowess – because due to injuries and our lack of depth – we are likely to need trade deadline help.
Painter, Crawford, McFarlane and maybe Miller continuing to improve.
Signs of life from Nola & Realmuto – we don’t have anyone else – they are here for awhile
Hot Stove predictions (because we do those)
I think we’ll sign one big bat (Arraez, Arozarena, Suzuki, or Sato)
I think we’ll sign a LH reliever (Morejon plz)
I think we might sign Mauricio Dubon to replace Edmundo Sosa and I think he might not be as good, but it will help a little.
I think we might trade away Kerkering or Marsh or both with prospects for an outfielder or reliever in their last year of player control. We don’t have a lot of prospects to deal though.
Hanging over all of this is the CBA and the Lockout deadline of December 1st. I don’t know what to expect – but I think speculation that we’ll have a free agent flurry before may be accurate because I think any cap may be phased in and grant some kind of grandfather clause and the owners/GMs will go on a black Friday style spending rampage to get deals in under the deadline.
I hope we have baseball in 2027. For now – we have a shortened, seemingly slow to wake up hot stove season.
Go Phils.