Phillies 2026 News and Discussion

[zambonir]

Disagree about Sosa. He hits LHP like an All-Star. Stott hits LHP like a minor leaguer. Heck, right now Stott hits everyone like a minor leaguer. And Sosa is probably just as good a fielder as Stott, possibly better. Just harder to be consistently good when you don't play as much. The occasional error just stands out. So does the occasional big hit.

Sosa is only overexposed when he faces RHP, which he shouldn't, barring injuries to Bohm or Turner. Except, of course, he's not necessarily worse than Bohm given Bohm was never that good against RHP either.

The Marsh/Crawford thing is harder to justify, but giving the rookie his day off against someone like Sale is still not a bad move.

Eventually Marsh and Stott will be gone if they're not re-signed, but how easily will these "others" be found? It shouldn't be this hard to find a decent RHB OF off the bench either. But it has been, year after year. Let's just hope Crawford is better than the now aging day care. And Miller too.

[Philsmania]

Sosa is fine sub but the more he plays (or the more he gets played as a regular), the more he gets exposed.

[andyb]

Sosa is fine sub but the more he plays (or the more he gets played as a regular), the more he gets exposed.

Which is why I was wondering a few posts ago about Kemp if Bohm really does not recover. Kemp is not good defensively but he is closer to Bohm at 3B than he is to Marsh in LF ability-wise. And there is something to the bat. His AAA stats last year were real. Bohm was better last year but if he has regressed and Kemp can improve a bit then maybe there is at least a backup solution to Bohm.

[zambonir]

Sosa is a great platoon IF against LHP. It's just that 2B is the only spot where he can do that. If Turner gets hurt and he's forced to play more the bat gets exposed but he's still the best fielder. If Bohm gets hurt, Kemp will come back. If Bohm get benched, that's a different situation. Not sure how the Phillies go down the road exactly.

Sosa is not playing much at all (five starts at 2B two at 3B) so not sure why there's even a notion he should play less. The problem is the starters. And also the other RHBs, Turner and Bohm and Garcia (JT is quietly having a decent year though of course he hasn't been playing the past few games.)

[zambonir]

Really boosting the credibility of this Hayes hot take by misspelling the manager's name in the headline

Want to fire Rob Thompson? Fine. Fire Dave Dombrowski, too. | Marcus Hayes

[andyb]

To be fair to Hayes, columnists rarely do the headline and editors do exist (or they are supposed to).

[julio]

To be fair to Marcus Hayes...his understanding of MLB is lousy, his reporting on MLB is lousy. I don't know if he's competent in other spheres, but if Marcus Hayes is writing about baseball, the odds that his writing is absolute crap are very high.

[zambonir]

No question he had nothing to do with it.

But not only did an editor make the mistake in the first place, and another editor fail to catch it, but nobody has even fixed it, five hours later. The social share version can't be undone, but it's still that way now on the home page and the story.

(Of course a lot of papers don't even have copy editors, or they use remote people, or AI. But Inquirer hasn't gotten there I don't think, mostly because they are independent/nonprofit).

[David_Criss]

It is easy to sit back and be an arm chair GM - should've only signed Casty to a 3-year deal, never should have given Walker or Nola the long contracts, shouldn't have signed Romano, Kepler and so far Garcia, etc. He took a lot of gambles and sadly none have really paid off. I am hoping Painter and Crawford are showing him he can play a young and hungry rookie over paying someone $30 million. JT held the team hostage, too. The fact is we as fans have a very expensive aging team to root for with a lot of contracts that cannot be moved, so what do you do? Hope for the best, but it is frustrating that the same team that hasn't gotten it done seems to keep coming back and being paid more and more while other teams make impact moves.

[andyb]

We are starting to pay for the prospects we have dealt over the past few years:

Ben Brown, Eduardo Tait, Hao Yu Lee, George Klassen, Hendry Mendez, William Bergolla, Starlyn Caba, Logan O'Hoppe, even Moniak.

There are a bunch of productive major leaguers and top prospects out there that we drafted or helped develop. Bergolla is developing into another Luis Arraez type. Still no power but OPS of over 1000 in AAA at age 21.

[zambonir]

Which would be the price of doing business if they'd won a WS or even played in one again the past three seasons, though obviously the regular seasons were successful. Dombrowski pretty similar to Gillick in their later stints: good closers, not great builders. But being both is easier said than done.

They both inherited their best players from much-maligned predecessors too. In Dombrowski's case, he signed Schwarber (but also Casty and Walker) and Turner but Bryce, JT, Wheeler, Sanchez, Bohm and Stott were all Klentak's (and Nola and Ranger go back to Amaro). But what DD didn't inherit was much of a farm.

And yet that is a pretty long list of prospects when you put them altogether, even as they made sure to hang on to Painter and Crawford. Most of them traded for relievers or 5th starters or rentals too. Marsh and Duran trades still fine in my book (and could still be traded if they really did to into full rebuild/retool mode).

[LoneStarPhan]

Thomson says fire Thompson.

I fully believe this ream is better than they are playing, but I have concerns. At 8-8, I was fine and looking for improvement to come. At 8-15, they are digging a hole that is increasingly a potential disaster.

[Philsmania]

Jo Jo Romero as well. That trade helped both teams. [note: this comment should have been in response to andyb's most-recent post]

Ben Brown was seen as expendable because he was supposedly #3 on the pitching prospect depth chart behind Abel and McGarry. Similarly, not on Dombrowski's watch, Sixto Sanchez was deemed expendable because of the emergence of Spencer Howard as new their #1 pitching prospect.

Dombrowski has, for a while now, been known to mine the farm to acquire veteran star talent to maximize an open window of opportunity and then get out of dodge and make the teardown and rebuild someone else's problem. See also, his tenures in Detroit and Boston.

[Philsmania]

Thomson says fire Thompson.

I fully believe this ream is better than they are playing, but I have concerns. At 8-8, I was fine and looking for improvement to come. At 8-15, they are digging a hole that is increasingly a potential disaster.

I don't think this team is near as bad as it has played so far--statistically worst team in baseball, though the Mets have lost more games--but I need some convincing that it is still one of the league's elite, if even still a good team as opposed to now a mediocre 78-82 win team. As I have said, for me, this season has really had that 1984, 1994 and 2012 "party's over" vibe to it.

[andyb]

All I was doing was pointing out that we have mined our second tier prospect depth. Favorable rankings of the Phillies minor league system were based upon how top heavy it was with Painter taking an extra 2-3 years to graduate. Now with Miller more of a question mark and our second tier of prospects mostly traded away it is a relatively poor minor league system (bottom 5).

[DurhamBull]

Sixto Sanchez was deemed expendable because of the emergence of Spencer Howard as new their #1 pitching prospect.

Or maybe Sixto Sanchez was deemed expendable because the Phils were nervous that he wouldn't develop into his projections. If that's the case, then they made the right call. He's only 25, but since he entered the majors w/Miami in 2020, he has only a total of 74 innings pitched, and is now an unsigned free agent.

[zambonir]

And also, TNSAAPP.

[Philsmania]

Which would be the price of doing business if they'd won a WS or even played in one again the past three seasons, though obviously the regular seasons were successful. Dombrowski pretty similar to Gillick in their later stints: good closers, not great builders. But being both is easier said than done.

Conversely, Ed Wade was a good builder who simply couldn't finish.

[zambonir]

Or Mike Arbuckle was

I'm not sure Wade always knew he was stubbornly holding on to the right players, but he did ultimately do it.

[allentown]

Dombrowski has, for a while now, been known to mine the farm to acquire veteran star talent to maximize an open window of opportunity and then get out of dodge and make the teardown and rebuild someone else's problem.

Except he hasn't traded for star talent. Too often he has paid more to get a second year of control and then ditched the guy after just the final month plus of the season. Others have been end-of-season fill-ins. The stars were big $ FA. Sanchez became a star but wasn't when we acquired him and that was before DD. Realmuto was acquired by trade, but that was before DD.