This time they can’t run it back. Not after another season of beautiful dreams ended in the most painful, most unfathomable way possible, even by Phillies standards.
Orion Kerkering’s panicked 11th-inning meltdown Thursday night didn’t just end the Phillies’ season. It ended an era.
This time, his team can’t run it back. That’s just the deal. That’s how life works. That’s how baseball works. That’s how Philadelphia works.
What that means, it’s too soon to say. Who’s leaving, who’s staying, who gets signed and who gets the boot is more complicated than 2 million talk show callers will make it sound.
But some things are clear.
The Phillies have a principal owner, in John Middleton, who isn’t going to take this well. He’s hyper-aware of his frustrated fan base, and he’ll push for changes with his customers in mind.
And the Phillies have a president of baseball operations, in Dave Dombrowski, who has been here, done this before. He knows what has to happen at times like this. He won’t be indecisive. He won’t be nostalgic. He won’t be afraid to do what leaders need to do when the ship runs this far off course.
But that doesn’t mean this won’t be a tough needle to thread. This isn’t the 2013-14 Phillies, hanging onto too many World Series heroes for too many years until there was no path forward except taking their lumps. This isn’t Dombrowski’s 2015-16 Tigers, another team that followed that keep-the-band-together playbook, at the behest of its owner.
This was a 96-win baseball team that just won its division by 13 games. This is the only team in the history of the National League that has just increased its regular-season win total for the last seven full seasons in a row.
This is a roster with long, expensive commitments to stars who came to Philadelphia to win. To Bryce Harper, signed through 2031. To Trea Turner, signed through 2033. To Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola, who are getting paid to be aces deep into their 30s. Just to name-drop a few.
This is a team with a payroll north of $300 million, a team that already has nearly $168 million committed to seven veteran players next year, a team with an owner who has publicly told the world he’s not interested in taking a step back. Not next year. Not in the next 10 years.
Still, this feels like the end … of something … because it has to be. In retrospect, it’s astonishing that Dombrowski has been this patient in letting this core group keep coming back, year after year, to try to find that magic formula.
I wrote about that patience seven months ago, during spring training. After researching all this for way too long, I learned something: What the Phillies have tried to do, with this group, is something we have almost never seen in the modern history of this sport.
How unusual is it for a team to keep bringing back the same stars, for two, three and now four years, without winning a World Series? In the wild-card era (1995-present), there’s basically no precedent for it.
This just became the fourth season in a row that the Phillies reached the postseason while getting at least 400 plate appearances per year from the same six players: Harper, Kyle Schwarber, J.T. Realmuto, Alec Bohm, Nick Castellanos and Bryson Stott. You know how many other franchises in this era have had a streak like that? Exactly one.
That team was the 1998-2001 Yankees — who actually managed to do that with the same seven hitters: Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Bernie Williams, Paul O’Neill, Tino Martinez, Scott Brosius and Chuck Knoblauch.
But does anything seem different about that group, versus this Phillies core? Who out there is raising their hands to shout out that those Yankees won three World Series (1998, 1999 and 2000), then made it to Game 7 in 2001. So that’s a core group that earned the right to keep running it back.
Now, though, it’s time for this owner and his front office to contemplate a different question about these Phillies: What has this group earned after four straight October exits, each one more disappointing than the year before?
Dombrowski can be bold at times like this. So be careful about predicting anything. But think through the roster. There is only so much that’s cut-and-dried.
Bryce Harper and Trea Turner are here to stay. But who will surround them? (Heather Barry / Getty Images)
Harper and Turner aren’t going anywhere. And there will be an all-out, do-whatever-it-takes push to bring Schwarber, who is an impending free agent, back. Outside of that, among the remaining position players, almost anything is on the table.
This front office is counting on Justin Crawford to be a presence in left or center field by sometime next year. Ditto with Aidan Miller, to hold down shortstop or third base, by sometime in 2027, if not sooner.
So get ready for another winter of Bohm rumblings. Dombrowski tried harder than he let on to move the third baseman last winter. Now, Bohm will be a year away from free agency this winter, with Miller hovering. So that one seems obvious.
And it feels as if Castellanos’ expiration date has arrived, even though he still has one year and $20 million left on his deal. How will this team orchestrate that exit? Excellent question. But Google all those Middleton quotes, about multiple topics, that all end with: “It’s just money.” Then assume that that quote will eventually apply.
What about Stott and Brandon Marsh? They feel more likely to stay than go. But Marsh feels less certain to stick around than Stott. The Phillies obviously prefer Marsh in left field to center. But if they view Crawford as their left fielder of the future, well, draw your own conclusions.
An impending free agent, J.T. Realmuto will be 35 years old next season. (Luke Hales / Getty Images)
Then there’s Realmuto. It’s almost amusing to think back to this spring, when there was so much talk about wanting him to take a step back from catching 130-plus games. What actually happened? He caught 132.
He remains embedded in the fabric of this team’s culture. His coaches love him. His pitchers depend on him. He’ll also be 35 years old by next Opening Day. But he undoubtedly sees no reason he should take a massive pay cut from the more than $23 million a year he makes now. And there is no free-agent catcher who would look better in red pinstripes than him.
So other front offices view him as the most interesting free agent on the Phillies’ roster — if only because many of them can’t imagine this owner and team president letting Schwarber walk out the door, no matter how many zeroes they’ll have to guarantee after the dollar sign.
What about the pitching side of this equation? The rotation has been the heartbeat of this window of contention. So that won’t change. But it’s also time to start looking over the horizon at what the next generation of this Phillies rotation will look like.
Cristopher Sánchez has grown into a front-of-the-rotation force, and he’s under club control through 2030. But it’s harder than ever to predict what next year holds for Wheeler or Nola. Jesús Luzardo will be a year from free agency. Ranger Suárez is the big-name Phillies free agent most likely to hit the exit ramp. And who can answer the question: How ready is Andrew Painter?
Still, a staff built around a now-confident Sánchez, a healthy Wheeler, a healthy Nola, a highly motivated Luzardo and a version of Painter that looks like the pre-Tommy John surgery stud is a staff any team could win with. And it changes everything about future bullpen construction to know that Jhoan Duran and the Duran-tula show are locked up for two more years.
One quick aside, though: Do they need to trade Kerkering? It’s possible Philly won’t ever be able to look at him again without getting Mitch Williams vibes. So that feels like something everyone needs to think about.
Will manager Rob Thomson, whose NLDS decisions were criticized, be back? (Harry How / Getty Images)
And that leaves one more gigantic question: Is this The End for the manager, Rob Thomson?
It’s easy for 43,000 fans to scream: Yessss! It’s easy to focus on The Bunt in Game 2 and the second-guessable bullpen decisions throughout the NLDS. And the owner certainly didn’t miss the grumbling about any of that.
But this is also the fourth manager in the history of this sport to take his team to the postseason in every one of his first four years on the job. And it wouldn’t be a shock if he was a top-three finisher in the National League Manager of the Year voting. So does he really deserve to be fired — or even eased into a different role?
Beyond the manager’s office, the pitching coach, Caleb Cotham, is one of the best in the business. The hitting coach, Kevin Long, has deep ties to Schwarber and other Phillies. So coaching change talk is murky territory. Which means the best way to describe what’s ahead is this: Anything is possible.
When beautiful seasons careen into endings this ugly, you can’t rule out anything. But as the changes unfold this winter, there will be time to reflect on the legacy of this group. And that won’t be as simple to assess as it might have felt when the shocking end arrived Thursday night.
What a ride. All that winning. All those packed houses. All those memories. All those stars who embraced their town. But, in the end, there were also all those Octobers that couldn’t finish off the fairy tale.
What a complicated narrative this group will leave. But when I asked Dombrowski this spring if those are “just narratives” or if they’re more, he gave a surprising response.
“No, I think it’s more,” he said. “And I’ll tell you why I think it’s more. It’s because when you come back and you have your 10-year reunion and you’re the world champions returning, versus the National League champions, there’s a difference.
“Not that they won’t be friends forever. Not that they won’t come back and have a great time. Not that they won’t reminisce. Not that the city won’t reminisce and celebrate them and all those type of things. But it’s just a different feeling when you win the world championship and you’re celebrating that.”
Once again, though, there will be no celebrating in Philly this fall. And when that feeling gets this familiar, you know what it means. This time they can’t run it back. After what unfolded at Dodger Stadium on a stunning Thursday evening, rerun time is over.
