{"id":450549,"date":"2025-11-26T17:14:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T17:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/450549\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T17:14:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T17:14:10","slug":"tommy-pham-aiming-to-play-several-more-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/450549\/","title":{"rendered":"Tommy Pham Aiming To Play Several More Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

Free agent outfielder Tommy Pham<\/a> struggled early in 2025 with the Pirates before a torrid stretch over the season\u2019s final few months. He\u2019ll turn 38 next March, but Pham is fully intent on playing in 2026 and appears to be eyeing multiple more seasons in his big league career. The well-traveled outfielder tells Katie Woo, Will Sammon and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic<\/a> that he hopes to cross both the 200-homer and 200-steal threshold before retiring. He\u2019s currently 51 homers and 69 steals away from reaching those lofty goals.<\/p>\n

Notably, Pham tells The Athletic that he has played through plantar fasciitis dating back to late in the 2023 season. That, Pham contends, has hindered him on the basepaths. He\u2019s swiped just 12 bags total over the past two seasons but stole 22 times in 2023. He\u2019s gone through stem cell treatment to address his plantar fasciitis and now feels confident he can get back to being more of a threat on the bases.<\/p>\n

Overall, Pham\u2019s 2025 season in Pittsburgh was pedestrian. He finished out the year with a tepid .245\/.330\/.370 batting line \u2014 about six percent worse than league-average offense, by measure of wRC+. Defensive Runs Saved pegged him as a strong left fielder (+5), while Statcast\u2019s Outs Above Average was more bearish and had him slightly worse than average (-2) in 925 innings.<\/p>\n

It bears mentioning, however, that Pham\u2019s modest batting line includes a middling stretch of two-plus months to begin the year. Over the final three months of the 2025 campaign, Pham came to the plate 273 times and turned in a hefty .278\/.363\/.468 slash (128 wRC+) with 10 home runs, 13 doubles, a triple, an 11.7% walk rate and just a 17% strikeout rate. He averaged 92.7 mph off the bat and turned in a huge 51.8% hard-hit rate in that time. Any team would love to have that type of output in its outfield mix.<\/p>\n

If Pham can continue anywhere close to that pace, he\u2019ll have a chance to get to the 200-homer threshold with another three seasons in the majors. Reaching 200 steals feels like a loftier goal, but Pham quipped that he\u2019s \u201cseeing all these guys that can\u2019t run like me steal 30 and 40 bases now\u201d and feels that with better health in his feet he can get back to running at higher levels. Both Josh Naylor<\/a> and Juan Soto<\/a> topped 30 steals in 2025 despite ranking in the second and 13th percentile of average sprint speed among big leaguers, per Statcast. Pham was in the 45th percentile even with his plantar fasciitis issues; back in 2023, he sat in the 61st percentile.<\/p>\n

Working in Pham\u2019s favor is that it\u2019s a thin market for teams seeking outfield help in free agency this winter \u2014 particularly from the right side of the plate. Harrison Bader<\/a>, Miguel Andujar<\/a> and Austin Hays<\/a> are all coming off productive seasons. There are a couple of notable rebound candidates in Lane Thomas<\/a> and Adolis Garcia<\/a>, the latter of whom was non-tendered by the Rangers<\/a> last week. But most of the market\u2019s top outfield options this offseason swing from the left side of the dish, and even in that regard, the supply of established veterans coming off healthy, productive seasons is limited. Clubs like the Guardians, Twins, Reds, Brewers, Marlins, A\u2019s and Rockies all have fairly left-handed outfield groups and could look to balance things out with a righty, speculatively speaking.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also one oddball record at least loosely in play for Pham, who in 2025 suited up for the tenth team of his major league career. He\u2019s still four teams shy of the record 14 that\u2019s jointly held by Rich Hill<\/a> and Edwin Jackson<\/a>, but Pham has added five teams to his list in the past three seasons alone. That\u2019s probably not a consideration for the veteran corner bat, but those 200 milestones clearly are. \u201cI don\u2019t have an All-Star appearance or anything like that,\u201d Pham tells The Athletic. \u201cBut getting to that number, I could look back at my career, and me, personally, I can be proud of myself.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Free agent outfielder Tommy Pham struggled early in 2025 with the Pirates before a torrid stretch over the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":450550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-450549","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-baseball","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-tommy-pham"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115617127957796476","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}