Time For Phillies to Blow Up the Roster After Latest Playoff Failure

If the Philadelphia Phillies needed a sign that it’s time to try something new, it’s hard to think of anything better than their latest shot at an elusive World Series title literally getting thrown away.

At no point in Game 4 of the National League Division Series did the Phillies have the Los Angeles Dodgers dead to rights, but it was a hyper-competitive game right up until Orion Kerkering had the bases loaded and two outs in the 11th inning.

First, his brain malfunctioned, and then his arm followed suit. The result? A 2-1 win for the home team, and what feels a whimper of an ending for this era of the Phillies.

For four years, the Phillies have maintained a consistent core while finding new stars to keep the party going. Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber, J.T. Realmuto, Nick Castellanos, Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola have been there the whole time. Ownership sunk $300 million into Trea Turner in 2023, and Dave Dombrowski can claim victories on the development of Cristopher Sánchez and the recent trade for Jhoan Duran.

Yet as much as this reads like a synopsis of a dynasty, these Phillies have thus far swung and missed in making one of those happen. The misses keep getting more painful, as their upward trend in regular-season wins means zilch in tandem with their diminishing returns in October:

Ahead of the Phillies now is an offseason that feels as critical as any in recent memory, and the smart money is on it starting with a change in the manager’s chair.

“I do think that he is clearly on the hot seat, if they don’t survive this,” Jon Heyman of the New York Post said of Rob Thomson in a B/R live stream on Wednesday. “It’s a little unfair because they’re playing the Dodgers…but that’s the nature of the job.”

And yet, to think that a new manager alone is going to get the Phillies to where they want to be is like thinking a totaled car is a new paint job away from winning the Indy 500. The roster needs a lot of work, too.

The Phillies stand to have a huge bite taken out of them by free agency, with Schwarber, Realmuto, Ranger Suárez, Max Kepler and Jordan Romano about to go to market. Schwarber and Suárez loom especially large, as the former just hit 56 homers and the latter was more valuable than aces like Max Fried and Bryan Woo.

Meanwhile, Harper and Turner will both be 33 next year, pushing them deeper into decline territory. For their parts, Nola (32) and Wheeler (35) are already there. Nola put up a 6.01 ERA in an injury-shortened season, and Wheeler’s future as an ace is in doubt after thoracic outlet surgery, which is very hard to come back from.

Though Castellanos has a year left on his five-year, $100 million deal, the Phillies needed to get him out of town yesterday. He’s been worth all of 1.1 rWAR in four seasons, and it’s hard to remain in anyone’s good graces when you’re griping about both your manager and your own fans.

The Phillies have a ton of salary about to come off their books, with their luxury tax payroll set to go from $312.6 million to a projected $237.2 million in 2026. Per B/R’s Joel Reuter, they also have MLB’s No. 10 farm system. In the abstract, these things should give Dombrowski leeway to buy, trade and promote talent to form a new-look core, with Harper and Turner still in the center.

The wrong approach would be to make the 2026 Phillies resemble the 2025 Phillies too closely. Instead of re-signing Schwarber, they might chance it on, say, Japanese slugger Munetaka Murakami. Instead of also bringing back Suárez and Realmuto, they might promote Andrew Painter and ask the Seattle Mariners if they really intend to have a young hotshot like Harry Ford work as Cal Raleigh’s backup.

It is, of course, hard to make specific predictions at a moment when the dust from the end of the Phillies’ season has yet to settle. Yet they shouldn’t need further clarity to know that simply running it back will only lead to failure all over again.