I recently came across this post on X which listed the players the Phillies have signed to one-year contracts over the past few seasons.
There’s a saying that “there’s no such thing as a bad one-year
contract,” but that list seems to work against that belief. To be fair, most of those guys weren’t signed to be major contributors, and they did find some usable bench players (Brad Miller, Johan Camargo) over the years. But there were some players – particularly relievers – who they expected to be at least semi-major contributors. Sadly, the best season out of any of them was Craig Kimbrel. (Kimbrel was actually very good for much of the year before he collapsed late in the season and the playoffs.)
As it turns out, there’s usually a reason why players sign for one-year deals. If there was a lot of optimism regarding how good these players were going to be, they would likely be attracting multi-year offers.
Looking ahead to the 2027 season, the Phillies once again have some holes to fill, and they only have so much money to fill them. Many fans are dreaming of filling one of the outfield spots with a free agent like Seiya Suzuki or Randy Arozarena.
I expect the Phillies to be in the mix for those players, but so will a lot of teams, and it isn’t clear if the Phillies can make the best offer. Unless you’re the Dodgers, teams generally can’t have high priced players at every position. While the pending player lockout might change the financial outlook for the Phillies, it doesn’t seem likely that they’ll be able to simply outspend themselves out of their current fringe of contention status.
The Phillies also might not want to lock themselves into yet another multi-year contract for a player’s decline phase. Sometimes those deals work out, but it isn’t hard to imagine one of them turning into Nick Castellanos 2.0.
The best alternative, of course, is to start developing young players to fill those holes. Wouldn’t it be nice if the Phillies could emulate the World Champion Brewers and call up a Cooper Pratt or Jackson Chourio? But based on the state of the minor leagues, the Phillies do not have many players who they can project to be regular contributors next year. (They REALLY need Aidan Miller to hit!)
Therefore, it shouldn’t come as a surprise if the Phillies have to once again turn to a few one-year contracts to fill out their starting lineup, bench, and bullpen. Maybe they get lucky this time around and can find players who actually provide good value. But it seems like more often than not, what they’ll end up with is the next Adolis Garcia or Jordan Romano.
