The season may not be technically over, but the Phillies have been in their offseason for two weeks. They have delayed their end of season press conference until today, with it now coming on the heels of the team making Don Mattingly their permanent manager. Manager was the first domino to fall for an offseason with much on the agenda, and the team’s choice has not exactly inspired the fan base’s belief in Dave Dombrowski and the front office’s ability to improve the roster or just inject some life
into the franchise overall.
In any case, there is still much to be done with the team on the field. The Phillies need to at minimum fix an offense that was among the worst in the league. Doing so will be easier said than done, as they do not have much in the way of trade ammunition and the free agent market is extremely light on impact bats. They need to rebuild a bullpen that collapsed in the second half of the season partially due to their now permanent manager’s heavy handedness in management. Finally, it would behoove the Phillies to also try and find ways to improve their defense, as they ranked near the bottom there as well and featured some of the worst defenders at any position in the sport.
And that’s before even taking into account the elephant in the room that is the looming lockout that threatens to at best wipe out some of the offseason and at worst take out some of the 2027 season in addition to completely revamping the financial systems of the sport.
Because of all this, it’s not necessarily being a pessimist if you are worried about how this Phillies offseason will go. That does not mean that reasons to be optimistic do not exist, but we will discuss those tomorrow. Today we’ll start with the bad news and try to envision what would constitute a poor offseason in your mind. So, what is your worst-case scenario for this offseason?
