Bryce Harper vows the Phillies will be back in 2024, but they face plenty of questions first

Bryce Harper stood before a throng of cameras and recorders late Tuesday, an hour after the heavily favored Phillies lost Game 7 of a playoff series that they held in a vise grip only a few days earlier. And for six minutes, he went through two stages of grieving.

Regret and resolve.

The regret — mistiming a center-cut 96 mph fastball “by a tenth of a second,” by Harper’s rough estimation, and flying out to center field with the tying run on base in the seventh inning — will fade. It could take weeks, even months. Eventually, though, Harper will get over feeling, in his words, “like I let my team down and let the city of Philadelphia down, as well.”

But the resolve? That’s liable to burn until the Phillies reconvene for spring training in 16 weeks — and probably beyond.

“We’ll be back,” Harper said.

Probably.

Five wins shy of a World Series crown after coming within two victories last year, the Phillies are fixed to contend again. They have superstar holdovers, the resources to improve, and an ambitious owner whose mission statement is to build one of the best teams in baseball history and turn his stewardship of the franchise into an enduring legacy.

» READ MORE: Murphy: Kyle Schwarber tells John Middleton he’s sorry, but the Phillies have no reason to apologize. They just got beat.

But there aren’t any guarantees, either. Every team that ever fell short of winning it all believed it would get other kicks at the can. History shows it doesn’t always work like that.

There’s also a long way from resolve to reality. President of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski will soon hold organizational meetings to chart a course for 2024, and there will be questions. How far should they go in free agency to bring back Aaron Nola? If he signs elsewhere, how will they replace him? Should they re-sign Rhys Hoskins? Is there a move that would prevent the offense from abruptly shutting down late in a postseason series for a third consecutive year?

But before the Phillies get to all that, a few items to consider:

The bill won’t come due until after the World Series, but for the second year in a row, the Phillies will pay the luxury tax on a club-record payroll that climbed above $260 million, according to the accounting at Cot’s Baseball Contracts.

For next season, the Phillies have $175.6 million invested in 10 players: Trea Turner, Harper, Zack Wheeler, J.T. Realmuto, Nick Castellanos, Kyle Schwarber, Taijuan Walker, Matt Strahm, José Alvarado, and Seranthony Domínguez. Eight players are eligible for salary arbitration: Ranger Suárez, Gregory Soto, Alec Bohm, Jeff Hoffman, Edmundo Sosa, Jake Cave, Garrett Stubbs, and Dylan Covey. Tendering a contract to all or most will push the payroll to nearly $200 million.

» READ MORE: Sizing up an Aaron Nola contract in free agency: The comps, the Phillies factors, and one familiar case

(Bryson Stott, Brandon Marsh, Johan Rojas, Cristopher Sánchez, and Orion Kerkering are among the pre-arbitration crew on the low end of the salary scale.)

If the payroll remains unchanged, there should be money to meet Nola’s salary demands. As one of a handful of top free-agent pitchers (with Blake Snell, Jordan Montgomery, and Japanese sensation Yoshinobu Yamamoto), Nola could reasonably seek between $25 million and $30 million per year.

But would the Phillies make a six- or seven-year commitment to the 30-year-old righty? He has been among the most durable pitchers in the sport, making the most starts (175) and throwing the second-most innings (1,065) since 2018.

In hindsight, the most amazing aspect of Harper’s season wasn’t that he made it back from an elbow ligament reconstruction in only 160 days. It was that he learned to play a new position on the fly while going through a throwing program to rebuild his arm strength.

But does Harper want to continue playing first base next year?

“With Rhys possibly coming back, whatever happens with that, I expect him to go back to first base and me go to the outfield and play out there in some capacity,” Harper said recently. “But I don’t mind giving them the option, even if he does come back, if Rhys needs a day off, to put me at first base and them knowing, ‘Hey, we can put him there at any point and he’ll be fine.’”

» READ MORE: Aaron Nola, Rhys Hoskins would ‘love’ to stay with Phillies but uncertainty looms after Game 7 heartbreak

OK, so this is a tricky topic for Harper. Hoskins is a homegrown star and one of the leaders in the clubhouse. Harper has referred to him as the Phillies’ “captain.” In deference to Hoskins, Harper isn’t about to publicly declare that he wants to be a first baseman for life.

But if Harper has a strong preference to stay at first base or return to the outfield, it would influence how the Phillies approach Hoskins.

The Phillies could sign Hoskins to a one-year, prove-it deal, put Harper back in the outfield, and look to trade Marsh or Rojas in a package for a starting pitcher, especially if Nola walks. But are they more athletic with Marsh in left field, Rojas in center, and Harper at first base? They’re certainly better defensively.

In 2009, the Phillies had a deeper, stronger roster than the season before. But rather than winning the World Series, as they did in 2008, they lost in six games to the Yankees.

Years from now, we’ll look back similarly at the 2023 Phillies relative to the 2022 club.

In spring training, owner John Middleton said, “We have maybe the best team in the history of the Phillies.” By season’s end, the occupants of the clubhouse believed they were at least better than last year.

» READ MORE: Hayes: Bryce Harper, Trea Turner, and Kyle Schwarber disappeared as the Phillies blew a 3-2 NLCS lead

Because after losing to the Astros in the World Series, the Phillies essentially replaced Jean Segura with Turner. Rob Thomson had more options in the bullpen — and that was before Hoffman got picked off the scrap heap at the end of spring training. Sánchez came up from triple A in June to seize the No. 5 starter spot; Rojas arrived from double A in mid-July; Kerkering got called up in late September after soaring through four levels of the minors.

The Phillies thought Craig Kimbrel was an upgrade over David Robertson, and for most of the season, it proved true. But Kimbrel allowed a walk-off hit in Game 3 of the NLCS and coughed up a 5-3 lead in the eighth inning of Game 4. The momentum was gone, and the Phillies never got it back, not even when they returned home.

So, Dombrowski & Co. will get to work on trying to make the 2024 roster even deeper, even stronger. And if, as Harper vowed, they get back to October, they’ll take their chances again.

“Having the owner that we do, having the GM and president that we do, they’re going to give us the best opportunity to get back to this position,” Harper said. “I expect us to be ready to go Feb. 15 when we get there.”