Buy, buy, buy: Phillies have shown Dave Dombrowski all he needs to see at MLB trade deadline

The Phillies have enough going for them right now that the right trade-deadline moves could put them in a strong position to make the playoffs.

Kyle Schwarber, right, celebrates as he returns to the dugout with Alec Bohm after hitting a home run against the Pirates on Sunday.Read moreGene J. Puskar / AP

by David Murphy | Columnist

Published Aug. 1, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET

There is no Phillies game on Monday, which means there is no chance that Dave Dombrowski holds a pregame press conference, which means there is no chance he enters the press conference with a dramatic descent from the top of the dugout while attached to a series of marionette strings.

That being said, if Dombrowski did hold a press conference on Monday, and if he did decide to begin it with an homage to one of the great music videos of the 1990s, it would make perfect sense. Because, right now, there are only three words that the Phillies’ personnel chief should have on his mind.

Buy. Buy. Buy.

Let’s hit the pause button real quick. I’m currently writing for a newspaper, which means I’ve probably already lost 75% of my audience. For those of you who still remain, let me clarify that the aforementioned three paragraphs were a reference to an iconic N’Sync Bye Bye Bye video that dropped while most of us were breathing a sigh of relief that the world did not end because Windows NT did not know what year it was. Whether you understood it or not, I’m well aware that it is a silly way for a professional writer to introduce his thoughts on the Phillies circa 2022. But, then, the Phillies are in a silly situation. It is Aug. 1, and they are in playoff position.

I’m convinced.

That’s what I’m trying to say. I’m not sure how else to say it. The Phillies have convinced me. This is a difficult thing to acknowledge, for a couple of reasons. One, I’ve spent the last couple of months telling anyone who would listen that the Phillies are most definitely not a team that should be going for broke at the trade deadline. Two, I’m still not sure that they won’t regret going for broke, even now that they’ve taken two of three from the Braves and four straight from the Pirates and have established themselves as a different sort of team from the ones we’ve seen spending the last few Augusts and Septembers fading like a screen-printed shirt.

That being said, I am sure of this: If the Phillies do not go for broke, and if they do end up breaking in the way they have in recent years, they will always have reason to wonder what might have been if they hadn’t talked themselves out of the opportunity that currently lies before them.

So, what does it mean to go for broke? As you can probably tell, I’m struggling to put into words what I actually believe. Let’s start with all of the reasons that I’ve been skeptical about this team:

There are plenty of legitimate contenders who worry about their ability to close out a 2-1 game. But there aren’t many who worry about their ability to close out an 8-1 game. But there we were on Sunday afternoon, watching the Phillies take the field with a seven-run lead and watching Jeurys Familia take the mound. With teams that are true contenders, what happened next would have elicited an ironic chuckle: Oneil Cruz singles, Josh VanMeter walks, Yoshi Tsutsugo singles and a run scores. With the Phillies? Be honest. What did you think?
There are plenty of legitimate contenders that start a pitcher like Bailey Falter or Kyle Gibson. Both are solid, strike-throwing pitchers. Fifty years ago, they probably would have won 19 games while pitching 357 innings. Now? We live in an age where everybody throws 95 with movement and lives on the outer fringes of the strike zone. There’s a reason why the only three outcomes you see are strikeouts, walks and extra-base hits. Today’s hitters tend to punish pitchers who rely mostly on defense and odds. You can get away with starting one of them every five days. The Phillies start two, and that feels like a problem.
Man cannot live on Schwar-bombs alone.

And, yet, here we are. The Phillies have 60 games remaining. They are on pace for 87 wins. Under the current playoff format, 87 wins in the National League would have qualified for the postseason in all but one year since 2009. Not only that, but the Phillies have two of the top 15 starting pitchers in the NL according to ERA+. And that doesn’t include Aaron Nola’s outing on Sunday, when he held the Pirates to one run in six innings with eight strikeouts and one walk. The Mets have zero. The Padres, Cardinals and Brewers have one. The Braves, Dodgers and Giants have two. Nobody has three.

The point is that, if you get these Phillies into a five- or seven-game series, the presence of Nola and Zack Wheeler alone gives them a fighting chance of holding an opponent to one or two runs in three or four games. The presence of Kyle Schwarber alone gives them the chance of scoring one or two runs in three or four games. Fact is, they are currently 55-47 based on that formula alone. Combine two Top 15 Cy Young candidates and a Top 15 MVP candidate and you don’t need much else to go right.

Thing is, plenty else is starting to go right. Alec Bohm and Bryson Stott are starting to contribute. The return of Jean Segura can’t help but help. The odds say Nick Castellanos and J.T. Realmuto will be better than they were before the All-Star break. The return of Bryce Harper could add a second Schwarber to the mix. Rhys Hoskins entered Sunday ranked 15th among qualified NL hitters in OPS+.

Two weeks ago, it was fair to assume that the Phillies’ best days were more likely to be ahead of them. Now? What is the likelihood that the Phillies end up in playoff position with three hitters who are having the seasons that Schwarber, Harper and Hoskins are having, plus two pitchers having the seasons that Wheeler and Nola are having?

If the Phillies are the team that they have been the last few years, they would have been swept by the Cubs and then lost both of their series against the Braves and Pirates. The fact that they ended up winning six of seven suggests that they are different.

The Phillies are not good enough for Dombrowski to throw caution to the wind. But they have shown him enough to warrant the benefit of the doubt in any borderline trade that asks him to err on the side of the here and the now. They need to upgrade one of Falter or Gibson. They need a reliever. Otherwise, they’ll be telling their playoff ticket sales a version of the thing they should be telling themselves right now.

Bye. Bye. Bye.