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It’s starting to look as though a lot of the offseason is going to be what many feared: run it back.
These three words are something of a bugaboo when it comes to discussing the Phillies. The team president of baseball operations, Dave Dombrowski, spoke at length about the quality of the roster as it is and, even with a few pending free agents, should be able to contend in 2026. We know that with free agency, the entire roster as it departed on October 9 cannot be the same. That’s just not a practical way of creating a major league roster. Yet the players that are able to shop their services around the league are players the team is in fact interested in retaining.
Which begs the question that you see below:
If the team does decide that they want to (mostly) run it back, it wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world. Dombrowski was correct in asserting that they did win 96 games and the team that they lost to is already a pretty decent favorite to win the World Series. A few different breaks go their way and perhaps we are writing World Series previews instead of watching other teams take the coverage.
Still, stagnation is a fear that should be creeping in. There needs to be some kind of change with this roster. We’re not talking about something so monumental that it upsets the balance of the organization, but the same cast of characters is going to need an infusion. Maybe that means the lineup shifts a little more to the right handed side. Maybe that means the relief corps is boosted with more veteran additions. Maybe that means a new clubhouse dynamic emerges that puts players in uncomfortable, yet necessarily different, positions.
For the most part, 2026 will feature a lot of the same players. How should we feel about that?
