Why Dave Dombrowski thought the Phillies needed to change their chemistry

Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos are power bats, but they're the foundation of Dombrowski's attempt to make "adjustments" to team culture.

Nick Castellanos greets teammates Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper as manager Joe Girardi looks on during pregame introductions on Friday.Read moreYONG KIM / Staff Photographer

by Scott Lauber

Published April 9, 2022, 12:00 p.m. ET

Dave Dombrowski’s interest in heading up the Phillies’ baseball operations went from 0 to 20 million (as in the value of his four-year contract) in about 60 hours a couple of years ago, not nearly enough time to do a multipoint inspection of the organization. So, he took the job in December 2020, then popped the hood and began poking around.

What did Dombrowski find in his first six months in charge last year? The Phillies had a shiny exterior but were missing parts of the engine, transmission, radiator, and alternator. They weren’t a jalopy, but they definitely need a good mechanic.

“I looked at it that we had a lot of good players, which we do,” Dombrowski said last week while seated in an office that overlooks left field in the Phillies’ spring training ballpark. “I mean, we had the MVP [Bryce Harper]; we had the second-place guy in the Cy [Young] that very easily could’ve won it [Zack Wheeler]; we had one of the best catchers, if not the best catcher, in baseball [J.T. Realmuto]. Without going through the whole team, we had a lot of good players. And yet the Phillies have been stuck in that .500 cycle.”

That’s what happens when a rebuilding team puts a cart filled with money before the twin horses of drafting and player development. The result is not an also-ran but not quite a true contender, and a playoff drought that has swelled to 10 years, the longest active absence in the National League.

Last summer, after months of observation, Dombrowski started to make fundamental changes. He reorganized the front office, hired a new minor league director (Preston Mattingly), and worked with manager Joe Girardi on bringing in new hitting and infield coaches (Kevin Long and Bobby Dickerson) and a director of pitching (Brian Kaplan) from Cressey Sports Performance, a popular training center in Florida.

And still, something seemed to be, well, lacking.

So Dombrowski went to work on the makeup of the clubhouse.

One thing he heard about from owner John Middleton was the Phillies’ annual late-season free fall. In 2018, they went 8-20 in September. A year later, they were 12-16 in the season’s final month. They hired Girardi to replace Gabe Kapler because of his track record of steering teams into the postseason and still went 13-17 in September of the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.

Dombrowski saw it firsthand last year. The Phillies won six games in a row from Aug. 27 to Sept. 2 and had a Charmin-soft schedule down the stretch. But they finished 13-16 and missed the playoffs again.

It wasn’t anything tangible, according to Dombrowski. He couldn’t touch it or feel it. But it was an attitude, an edge, that successful teams seem to possess. Stick around baseball long enough and you know it when you see it.

“You look in the field and you just say there’s something that’s not there,” Dombrowski said last week. “You just think you need a change.”

That helps explain why the Phillies targeted Kyle Schwarber, a slugger with brute power but also a World Series champion with the hex-busting Chicago Cubs in 2016.

After signing Schwarber to a four-year, $79 million contract, they doubled down on offense with a five-year, $100 million deal for Nick Castellanos. But they liked Castellanos for more than his big bat. Dombrowski, who was running baseball operations with the Detroit Tigers when they drafted Castellanos in 2010, viewed him as a fiery competitor who brings an edge, reminiscent locally of Jayson Werth during the Phillies’ salad days.

“It’s nice to see a couple guys come in here that are fiery and passionate about what they’re doing,” Harper said. “They’re professionals. They’re going to bring a high energy.”

And their impact was palpable in spring training.

Schwarber, for one, talked about leaning into the postseason dry spell. It worked for the Cubs, who went 108 years without a World Series title before winning it all six years ago.

“Everyone hung on to that 108 years, 108 years 108 years,” Schwarber said. “That was something that we hung on to and played for. We’ve got to figure out what we want to do and what we want to hang on to and what we want to strive for every day walking out that door, going on that field, crossing onto the line, and going out there and trying to win that baseball game any way possible.”

The Phillies are already rallying around Castellanos’ emotion. Remember the quote from his introductory news conference: “I don’t have a college degree. I hit baseballs.” It showed up on T-shirts on opening day, an idea that Castellanos said was spurred by Long. Several players wore the shirts around the clubhouse. Castellanos wore a gray shirt with cutoff sleeves that read simply, “Philadelphia Baseball.”

And when upstart center fielder Mickey Moniak broke a bone in his right hand in his final spring-training at-bat, Castellanos cheered him up by insisting that he travel with the team during his four-to-six-week rehab.

“I wouldn’t want him to feel disconnected,” Castellanos said in what represents a change from a clubhouse that was characterized by two sources as “a little cliquey” last season.

“It kind of goes to show what kind of team we’ve got here,” Moniak said. “It’s special. We’ve got a team that can make a long run in the postseason and win the World Series. I firmly believe that.”

So long as the defense improves and the pitching depth holds up and injuries don’t sink the entire enterprise.

But the Phillies believe they made some “adjustments,” in Dombrowski’s words, to the chemistry. A season’s worth of observations told him they were necessary. Maybe they will help. They certainly can’t hurt.

“It was just my evaluation of how we were put together,” Dombrowski said. “Hopefully I’m accurate with my assessment.”