Phillies reportedly not likely to add another major starting pitcher

Never say never, but it doesn’t appear that Philadelphia Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski intends to add another major starting pitcher before the start of the 2024 season.

Matt Gelb of The Athletic wrote Friday that “the Phillies are not, barring an unforeseen market collapse, interested in Blake Snell or Jordan Montgomery, according to a major-league source.”

That isn’t an especially surprising development considering Aaron Nola returned on a seven-year/$172 million deal back in November, and the Phillies project to return all five starters that got them to the NLCS a season ago. Nola, Zack Wheeler and Ranger Suárez make up one of the better trios in the league. The Phillies would probably like a mulligan on the four-year/$72 million deal they gave Taijaun Walker last offseason, but he did log 172 2/3 regular season innings in 2023, so it’s hardly as though he provided no value. And Cristopher Sánchez — who has no remaining minor-league options — earned a spot in the rotation by posting a 3.44 ERA across 99 1/3 innings a season ago.

Certainly, any team would love to have Snell or Montgomery. Snell is a two-time Cy Young Award winner. Montgomery just helped the Texas Rangers to win a World Series. Any team would be better for having them. But Snell has only logged over 130 innings twice in his career, and figures to want a deal paying him in the neighborhood of $200 million. Montgomery is, according to Joel Sherman of The New York Post, hoping to eclipse the aforementioned $172 million the Phillies gave Nola.

As Spring Training nears, perhaps Snell or Montgomery will blink and be willing to take a shorter-term deal with a high average annual value that allows them to opt out and return to the free-agent market next offseason if they so choose. Maybe then the Phillies would have more interest, but so would every other team.

If there’s any free-agent pitcher whose market the Phillies should still be monitoring in case it torpedoes, it’s All-Star closer Josh Hader. The Phillies, rightfully so, like a lot of the arms they have in their bullpen, including José Alvarado, Seranthony Domínguez, Jeff Hoffman and Matt Strahm. But none of them, respectfully, are Hader, whose career is on a Hall of Fame trajectory.

All indications this offseason, though, have been that the Phillies aren’t players for Hader. And even if his asking price drops dramatically, why are we to believe the Phillies would then become the logical landing spot over other contenders like the Rangers, New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers?

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