All aboard for a World Series trophy: Anything less for the 2024 Phillies would be a letdown

Every year, on the morning of the first full-squad workout, the doors to the Phillies’ spring-training clubhouse close for a state-of-the-team meeting. The manager usually says a few words. So does the president of baseball operations.

Mostly, though, the floor is John Middleton’s.

Middleton owns the largest stake in his hometown baseball team and runs it with the sensibility of a lifelong fan. (Ever see another owner pick up balls in the outfield during batting practice or peek through a fence behind the catcher to view a pitcher’s bullpen session?) He’s emotional, with the competitiveness of a former college wrestler. And when he addresses the players, he shares his ambitious vision of an organization that wins relentlessly and contends for championships annually.

» READ MORE: Owner John Middleton on Phillies’ huge offer to Yoshinobu Yamamoto, saving the ‘powder’ for July, and more

But this year’s spiel struck a different tone. Four months after the Phillies fumbled away the pennant with losses — at home, no less — in Game 6 and 7 of the NL Championship Series, Middleton stood in the center of the room and spoke as passionately as ever, according to several players, even repeating something he famously told Ryan Howard at Yankee Stadium after the Phillies fell in the World Series 15 years ago.

“I want my [expletive] trophy back.”

With that, the gauntlet came down. For the Phillies in 2024, it’s World Series or bust.

The owner said so.

”I mean, it’s everyone’s goal, right?” second baseman Bryson Stott said. “We talk about it among ourselves in here. But hearing Mr. Middleton say that, hearing it straight from everybody’s boss — the parking attendants’ boss, our boss, our coaches’ boss — it was like, yeah, he means business.

“That was the most fired up I think I’ve ever seen him.”

It isn’t merely that the Phillies went to Game 6 of the 2022 World Series and looked unstoppable through two games of the NLCS last October. It’s that Middleton authorized a payroll that has risen to club-record heights three years running and Dave Dombrowski built a star-laden roster that will remain together for years to come.

» READ MORE: How do the Phillies chase a World Series title, and long-term winning? Follow the money.

You’ve heard of the proverbial “championship window?” This is what it looks like:

The Phillies’ window is so wide open that it might as well be a door.

“John and Dave have made it very clear they want to win now,” Realmuto said. “That’s refreshing for players to hear and to know that we are in our window. We don’t feel that it’s closing any time soon, but we still want to step on the gas and win a World Series now. We don’t want to wait two or three years. We’ve been close the last couple years, but we want to kick through the door and make it happen.”

If it does, it will be with almost the exact cast of characters that fell short last year.

» READ MORE: How the Phillies closed the seven-year, $172 million megadeal with Aaron Nola

The Phillies offered the most money, all-in, to right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto, according to multiple sources. But the Japanese star preferred to pitch for the Dodgers and signed a 12-year, $325 million contract, the largest ever for a pitcher (non-Ohtani division). They pushed for free-agent relievers Jordan Hicks and Robert Stephenson, who signed with the Giants and Angels, respectively.

So, having thrown $172 million at Nola in free agency to prevent the rival Braves from peeling him away, Dombrowski told Middleton that he thought it best to run it back — and double down.

The roster is unchanged, save for the subtraction of postseason antihero closer Craig Kimbrel and the additions of utilityman Whit Merrifield and depth righty Spencer Turnbull. But in spring training, the Phillies extended Wheeler’s contract, hiking his annual salary to club-record heights ($42 million) beginning next year. Last weekend, they sprang for an extension for reliever Matt Strahm, too.

Never mind this year’s payroll, projected to exceed $260 million. The Phillies already have $214.9 million on the books for 10 players next year.

“Words are just words until you show that the actions are there to back it, and John has,” Castellanos said. “He comes in here and talks like that, then gets the extension done with Wheeler immediately after that. You can tell that John’s all-in.

“He’s not showing up and just throwing dice out there and hoping that we get snake eyes, you know?”

And Middleton’s expectations couldn’t be greater. World Series or bust.

No pressure.

Who are we kidding? Of course there’s pressure.

“There’s no way around it,” Wheeler said. “There’s pressure. There’s expectations to perform and do well, make it back to the playoffs and World Series, win it. City expects it. Leadership expects it. We expect it. Fans expect it. And making it to the playoffs is hard.”

Most projection models like the Phillies’ chances. But they also draw a distinction between them and the National League’s dual superpowers: the Braves and Dodgers.

As if the Dodgers weren’t already a Goliath, with 11 consecutive playoff appearances, they added Ohtani, Yamamoto, pitcher Tyler Glasnow, and outfielder Teoscar Hernández as part of a billion-dollar offseason. And despite falling to the Phillies in back-to-back postseasons, the Braves have won six NL East titles in a row, finishing 14 games better than the Phillies in each of the last two seasons.

» READ MORE: Zack Wheeler wanted fewer years in his new deal. What it means for him and the Phillies’ ‘championship window.’

It’s no wonder PECOTA, Baseball Prospectus’ projection system, has the Dodgers and Braves for at least 100 wins apiece. FanGraphs pegs them for 97 and 92 wins, respectively.

The Phillies: 84.2 wins by PECOTA, 85 by FanGraphs, 89.5 in Las Vegas.

“It comes down to just getting off to a better start, and that’s something we’ve not done a good job of two years in a row,” Realmuto said. “I’d rather be hot at the end than the beginning, and I still feel that this is a second-half team and this team is built for the postseason. But we need to do a better job of not digging ourselves a hole to where we can’t come back in the division.”

Indeed, the Phillies started 25-32 last season and 22-29 in 2022. In both cases, they kicked it into gear in June and pushed to make the playoffs via the wild card. Nobody wanted to face them, especially the Braves, but the road to October could’ve been a lot smoother.

Regardless, the Phillies think they’re closer to the 100-win pace at which they played after June 2 last season. If they can avoid another stumble out of the gate, well, why shouldn’t they hang with the Dodgers and Braves?

“Anybody that goes into spring training, their aspiration is to win the World Series,” Harper said. “If you don’t have that aspiration, then what are you doing here, right? ... You usually have 10 to 12 teams that are really going for it every year or that think they have a chance. We’re one of those teams.”

Harper’s teams have been in that position for most of his career.

» READ MORE: Phillies’ Nick Castellanos finally ‘at peace’ with playing in the Philadelphia sports fishbowl

The Nationals drafted him first overall in 2010, the most pivotal move in a down-to-the-studs rebuilding process. They called him up in 2012 and made the playoffs in four of his first six seasons. After three near-misses with the Phillies, he has been the star of the last two Octobers, batting .324/.432/.705 with 11 homers in 30 games.

But after the Game 7 loss to the Diamondbacks last year, two numbers stuck in Harper’s brain: 108 and 44, as in the exit velocity and launch angle of his rally-ending fly ball to center field in the seventh inning.

“We just didn’t win enough games,” said Harper, not one for living in the past. “We’ve got to win more games and understand this is a window that we have to win in. Our ownership deserves that. Our fans deserve that. Dombrowski deserves that, as well. And we do, too. We’ve got to go out there and play our game and play Philly baseball, and we’ll see what happens.”

Even now, Middleton says he’s “angry” over the Phillies’ NLCS collapse, a sentiment shared by many players. It’s an emotion that can’t linger for them as it can for the owner. A new season is about to begin, and it will demand their focus.

But they can use it as fuel.

“You’re not ever going to get over that Game 7 loss,” Stott said. “I don’t think we’ll ever forget that moment of, ‘How are we even in a Game 7? How did we ever allow this to get back to Philadelphia?’ But you have to put it behind you because you don’t want that cloud hanging over you coming into this year.

“And then it’s like, ‘OK, [Middleton’s] in the same feeling. He wants that trophy.’ And I think we’re all eager to get back out there. I think we’re all ready to kind of get going and get back to where we’ve been the last couple of years.”

Middleton’s family has owned a stake in the Phillies since 1994, initially as a limited partner. As the share increased, he took on a more public-facing role. By 2015, he was front and center for press conferences to announce the hirings of Andy MacPhail and Matt Klentak.

In 2018, Middleton famously pledged the closer-to-contention Phillies would “be a little bit stupid” with how much money they spent. Although the payroll did rise over the next few years, they seemed to treat the luxury tax like a salary cap, toeing the threshold but never crossing it.

Then, once baseball returned from the owners’ lockout in March 2022, Middleton floored it, zooming into tax territory and not looking back.

» READ MORE: Bryce Harper's stiff back is no big deal, but it's a fact of life now for the face of the Phillies

In 2022, the Phillies paid $2.9 million in taxes on a $244.4 million payroll. Last year, their tax bill was $6.9 million on a $255.3 million payroll. This year, as a third-time threshold-buster that exceeds the $237 million mark by more than $20 million, their tax rate will go up to 62%.

The fans approve. The Phillies’ season-ticket base has climbed to 19,700, according to MLB.com, up from 15,700 in March 2023 and 10,000 in March 2021.

“One of the things I always said is, I intend to push the envelope to win, and there’s different ways you can push the envelope,” Middleton said. “Spending is just one of those ways. I’ve never thought about it like ‘breaking through the luxury tax.’ It’s always been about, is this player a difference-maker? When you have somebody like Dave Dombrowski, who has demonstrated that he’s an astute assembler of talent to form a cohesive team, you give him a lot of latitude.

“The money that we spend is actually just a by-product of wanting to win and finding the players to help you to win.”

Most owners don’t talk like that. Castellanos was once around one who did. With the Tigers, he heard similar sentiments from Mike Ilitch, who green-lit large payrolls in an attempt to bring a championship to Detroit.

“Not in a group setting like [with Middleton], but you could tell through conversation that he was not sitting at the ownership table to collect revenue-sharing checks,” Castellanos said. “He wanted the Tigers to win for the city of Detroit. He knew what that would mean for the people that live there. It was easy to tell that he was somebody that really loved being able to own their hometown team. There are a lot of similarities between Mike and John.”

Including this: Ilitch hired Dombrowski to run baseball operations.

» READ MORE: Where does Zack Wheeler rank among the best free-agent signings in Phillies history?

With the Tigers, Dombrowski built teams that ran up large payrolls and went to the playoffs four years in a row, including the World Series in 2012 and Game 6 of the ALCS in 2013.

But they never won it all.

It speaks to the immensity of the challenge and the confluence of events that must go right over seven months. Of all the reasons why the World Series trophy has eluded Middleton since 2008, most go beyond merely financial might and force of will.

“I got chills when he said that,” Marsh said. “Because I was like, ‘Dude, you’re not really seeing many guys in his position that are speaking to their clubs like that.’ It fired the boys up. I’m getting the goose bumps feeling right now. We’ve got an amazing, amazing squad that they’ve put together here. We’ve just got to go and get it done.”