Philadelphia Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski previously turned heads with his comments about Bryce Harper after a playoff loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers, but he quickly dismissed any notion of the team trading him.
“I’ve been reading that the Phillies may trade Bryce Harper. That couldn’t be further from the truth,” Dombrowski said during a Thursday appearance on Foul Territory.
Dombrowski also called Harper “one of the best players in the game of baseball” and an “elite talent,” which was notable since he wondered if he will return to that “elite” status during his post-playoff press conference:
“He’s still a quality player. He’s still an All-Star-caliber player. He didn’t have an elite season like he has had in the past. And I guess we only find out if he becomes elite or he continues to be good. If you look around the league, I think … Freddie Freeman: He’s a really good player, right? He still is a good player. Is he elite like he was before? Probably not to the same extent. Freddie is a tremendous player, and that, to me, is Bryce. Can he rise to the next level again? I don’t really know that answer. He’s the one that will dictate that more than anything else.
“I don’t think he’s content with the year that he had. And again, it wasn’t a bad year. But when you think of Bryce Harper, you think of elite, right? You think of one of the top 10 players in baseball, and I don’t think it fit into that category. But again, a very good player. I’ve seen guys at his age—again, he’s not old—that level off. Or I’ve seen guys rise again.”
While some may have seen the comments as critical, it is a fair question to ask considering Harper is 33 years old and wasn’t “elite” by his own sky-high standards during the 2025 campaign.
He did not make the All-Star Game while slashing .261/.357/.487 with 27 home runs and 75 RBI. His OPS of .844 was his lowest mark since 2016 and well below the 1.044 number he put up in 2021 when he took home the National League MVP.
That was Harper’s third season with the Phillies after he previously won the NL Rookie of the Year in 2012 and the NL MVP in 2015 with the Washington Nationals.
In all, Harper’s resume includes two MVPs, four Silver Sluggers, a Rookie of the Year, a National League Championship Series MVP and eight All-Star selections. He is one of the best players of his generation and has largely maintained an impressive level of play across 14 seasons.
Few players in the league have a higher baseline of expectations because of that track record of success than Harper, and Dombrowski and others have seen him perform at a higher level in the past than he did in 2025.
He is still under contract with the Phillies through the 2031 campaign, so the question of whether he will return to elite status is an important one for the team. He figures to be one of the faces of the franchise for years to come as he chases the World Series title that has eluded him, and the hope in Philadelphia is he continues to produce as he gets older.
Dombrowski’s immediate dismissal of Harper as a trade candidate suggests the front office believes he will produce at a high level in the coming seasons.
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