As the Philadelphia Phillies wait to learn their NLDS opponent, there’s a real sentiment among the fanbase that the team needs to get over the hump and win the World Series in 2024 after a pair of close calls the last two Octobers.
Zack Wheeler is 34. J.T. Realmuto is 33. Nick Castellanos and Matt Strahm are 32. Bryce Harper, Trea Turner, Aaron Nola, Kyle Schwarber and Jeff Hoffman are 31. The core group that led the Phillies to 95 wins this season isn’t going to be at the height of their powers forever.
But when asked Tuesday, Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski pushed back on the idea that the window is closing for the club.
“No, I don’t, and I’ll tell you the reason behind that,” Dombrowski said in the Phillies dugout.
“So first of all, I don’t feel like our window is closing. I keep hearing that,” Dombrowski said. “But what I think happens is that sometimes it closes with the current players that you have, but it doesn’t mean that it closes overall. And I’m not saying that this is the time period, but we have young players coming that we really like. And we also have ownership that’s very kind to us with our expenditures on payroll.”
Dombrowski didn’t deny that there will be aging from the current core, but believes from an organizational standpoint the Phillies will be set up to be successful for the foreseeable future.
“So I think if you’re in a position where some players age and they get older. Some of their skills diminish at times. That’s just a fact. And some at different paces and all,” Dombrowski said. “But what you need to be doing is having young players coming in the meantime. And we think that we have some really good young players coming within the system.”
The future Hall of Fame executive then pointed to some of the younger pieces already contributing to the Phillies, while alluding to a farm system that includes the likes of Andrew Painter, Aidan Miller, Justin Crawford and Eduardo Tait.
“And some of them are here,” Dombrowski noted. “I mean when you see guys like Stott and Bohm and Marsh and then Sánchez … who’s going to be around for a while … and Kerkering and Rojas. But we have another group of people behind it.”
There’s some truth in what Dombrowski is saying, without a doubt. When this current group ages out of their peaks, the Phillies shouldn’t fall off the way they did from 2012-2021. Organizations with the financial wherewithal of the Phillies should never go a decade without going to the postseason.
At the same time, it’s a once-in-a-generation occurrence that someone like Harper becomes a free agent in his mid-20s. The Phillies may never make out better in signing a free-agent pitcher than they have with Wheeler. When Schwarber is no longer hitting 40 home runs a season and drawing 100+ walks, those type of guys don’t just grow on trees. Neither do pitchers with the durability of Nola.
There’s definitely some nuance here. Will the window be slammed shut for the Phillies if they don’t win the 2024 World Series? Probably not. But it’s hard to imagine them being better set up to win a title soon than they currently are.
“So I don’t think that the window for the Phillies is closing, but you always have some limitation on the current team that you have.”
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