CLEARWATER, Fla. — If a fan bought a replica jersey of his favorite Phillies hitter ahead of the 2023 season, there's a real good chance they'll be able to wear it while cheering for their guy again at Citizens Bank Park this year.
After being stunned by the Diamondbacks in the '23 NLCS, the only change in the lineup was replacing Kody Clemens with Johan Rojas. After being ambushed by the Mets in the '24 NLDS, the projected position players for the upcoming marathon are the same except for Max Kepler instead of Rojas.
Since going all the way to Game 6 of the World Series in 2023, the Phillies have checked out of the postseason dance a little earlier each succeeding year. That's left a fan base used to changes — often loud, whizbang changes of the nine-figure variety — feeling a little lost. Especially after the biggest plum of the free-agent market, outfielder Juan Soto, signed with the rival Mets.
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Earlier this spring, president of baseball operation Dave Dombrowski, who has a reputation as a bit of a gunslinger, sat in his BayCare Ballpark office and discussed what had happened between the early expectations that the Phillies' roster would undergo a significant makeover and ending up with only a few cosmetic changes.
"We basically said we were open-minded to make changes. We didn't say we were going to make big changes. That's a significantly different vernacular," he said, prefacing his explanation for why the Phillies were far less aggressive than many observers anticipated.
For the third straight year, then, the plan is that the core eight of Bryce Harper, Trea Turner, Kyle Schwarber, Nick Castellanos, J.T. Realmuto, Bryson Stott, Alec Bohm and Brandon Marsh will remain intact when the new season begins at Nationals Park on March 27.
It's worth inserting at this point that Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane was famously quoted in "Moneyball" saying, "There can never be a status quo. ... You have to always be upgrading. Otherwise, you're (screwed)."
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But also that former Phillies GM Pat Gillick earned the derisive nickname "Stand Pat" early in his career with the Blue Jays by fans who disagreed with what they viewed as an overly slow-and-steady approach. He now has a plaque in the Hall of Fame.
It's all about the Ws and Ls, right? So it remains to be seen whether or not running it back one more time will work. That answer will only begin to reveal itself beginning at Nationals Park; the final grade won't be posted until six or seven months later.
Without getting into specifics — rumors that Bohm had one spike out the door were rampant all winter — Dombrowski stressed again that he was willing to shake up the lineup ... but was also willing not to.
"A lot of times in the past it might have been, 'Well, if we can fill in this spot, that's all we're doing.' But we were very open-minded to (aggressive moves)," he said. "Maybe people envisioned that as we were going to make a bunch of changes. Or that we were just going to get rid of players to get rid of them. But that wasn't the case. Because we had a lot of good players and we had a good team. We won 95 games and we won the division.
"We had a lot of conversations, particularly early, about our players. But we just didn't feel that any of the deals made sense for us. We weren't going to make a move just to make a move. So after that, we needed to make some other moves. So we signed Kepler, we signed (righthander Jordan) Romano, we signed (righthander Joe) Ross. We traded for (starter Jesus) Luzardo. And those things started happening quickly because at that point if you don't start making those moves, players are going to be gone."
Weren't going to make a move just to make a move ...
Late on the night of October 9, 2024, shortly after being bounced by the Mets in Game 4, several of the position players were already campaigning for another opportunity to get it right with the players already on hand. "I think we've got the right guys in here," Turner said, a sentiment that echoed through the room. "I would hope they keep us together."
At the time, that seemed unlikely. The Phillies had already tried that and it resulted in an earlier exit rather than a deeper run. It called to mind the overused cliché about the definition of insanity being doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result.
Dombrowski wasn't thinking that way, though. Asked if changing just for the sake of changing ever works, he smiled.
"Ever is a big word, so I'd probably have to say yes," he said. "But I don't think I've ever made a trade just to make a trade, no. I've always gone in with the focus of, 'We need this. This makes sense.' And made a deal like that."
There's a flip side to that, too. From all outward appearances, the Phillies have had exceptional clubhouse chemistry the past few seasons. Asked if he would shy away from trading certain players or bringing too many new personalities into the mix to avoid upsetting that balance, he shook his head.
Then he told a story about a lesson he learned in 2018 when he was president of the Red Sox baseball operations. Boston won 108 games in the regular season. Won the World Series. "We had a great club and I went to great efforts to keep that team together," he said.
"And it didn't work. For a few reasons. Some were injuries. But there were other things. Every club is different. But I don't think any more I would go back to just saying, 'I'm keeping that team together from a chemistry perspective.'"
Realmuto and Schwarber are free agents. Castellanos has one more year on his deal. Bohm, Stott and Marsh are all arbitration-eligible, at a point in their careers when tough decisions have to be made about whether to tie them up with long-term, big-bucks deals.
In spring training, the lockers of the once-and-future lineup are grouped in the back left corner of the clubhouse. No matter what happens this season, that most stable neighborhood will almost certainly look different a year from now.