The Phillies should be better than this. But can Dave Dombrowski really have no regrets with his roster?
Hours after firing manager Rob Thomson, the Phillies president was doubling down on his $317 million roster. It will be up to the players, as ever, to prove him right.
In his 36th season as the highest-ranking executive in a major league front office, Dave Dombrowski figures he knows what a winning team looks like.
Hint: This isn’t it.
A month into the season, the Phillies haven’t pitched or played defense like a winning team. They sure as heck haven’t hit like one. They have a bunch of right-handed hitters who should bat seventh in a contender’s lineup, but none who should bat fourth.
Dombrowski must see it. He has eyes.
» READ MORE: Dave Dombrowski is ‘responsible’ for this reeling Phillies roster. And these decisions helped get them here.
Yet there he was Tuesday, hours after firing manager Rob Thomson amid a 9-19 start and a majors-worst minus-54 run differential, actually defending the roster that he built and is costing ownership more than $320 million, including luxury tax.
“No, I don’t have any regrets,” Dombrowski said. “If we play this way the rest of the year, I’ll have a lot of regrets at the end of the year. But I think we’re a lot better than this.”
The next 28 games will be better because, well, it’s impossible to be worse. Also because the schedule will get Charmin soft after 13 consecutive games against the scorching Cubs and Braves.
And because a starting rotation of Cristopher Sánchez, Jesús Luzardo, Aaron Nola, Andrew Painter, and now Zack Wheeler — and free from Taijuan Walker — is too good to keep getting blown out.
But no regrets? None?
Not even with Alec Bohm, whom Dombrowski dangled in trade talks two winters ago and would have dealt in January if free agent Bo Bichette accepted the Phillies’ offer, still playing third base — and lugging a .444 OPS?
Or with Felix Reyes, with five games of major league experience, batting cleanup against lefties because neither Bohm nor Adolis García has produced? (The Phillies are 0-10 against non-opener lefty starters; their right-handed hitters entered Tuesday with a .505 OPS against lefties, which would be the lowest mark since the 1918 Red Sox.)
And with nearly $35 million of dead money on the books for Nick Castellanos and Walker, both of whom were signed as free agents by Dombrowski and released this year?
» READ MORE: Dave Dombrowski talked with Alex Cora about replacing Rob Thomson: ‘I thought that he might take it’
The Phillies replaced Thomson with bench coach Don Mattingly. What they really need, with a .567 OPS from the cleanup spot, is the 1985 American League MVP version of Mattingly.
But there was Dombrowski again, insisting he has no regrets.
“This club is talented,” he said. “I don’t want to say the most, but as talented as most [teams]. We just have not played that way. So, if we don’t play that way, we won’t [win]. We have to play better in every way.
“Do I think we can play better? I hope so. If not, then we’ll all have made a mistake.”
It takes a lot for Dombrowski to admit his. Just in case, though, he flew three of his trusted pro scouts — David Chadd, Charley Kerfeld, and Brad Sloan — to Atlanta last weekend to watch three games against the Braves and observe from the dugout and clubhouse before and after.
“I wanted to check myself,” Dombrowski said. “Is this the type of club we are? Is this us?”
And?
“Unanimously,” Dombrowski said, “the feeling was we’re a much better club than this.”
OK, then. So, Dombrowski might have axed Thomson anyway. Because that’s what tends to happen to managers of underachieving teams with sky-high payrolls, even though Thomson hadn’t lost the clubhouse.
“We feel awful,” Kyle Schwarber said.
Trea Turner added, “Nobody wanted this.”
Well, except that Dombrowski’s motivation to make a change seemed to increase after Alex Cora, whom he hired and won a championship with the Red Sox, was let go in Boston last weekend.
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Cora spoke by phone to Dombrowski last Saturday night — “He just called me as a friend,” Dombrowski said — and again Sunday morning. It was then that he gauged Cora’s interest in managing the Phillies … while Thomson was preparing to manage a game against the Braves.
Not the best look.
Cora told Dombrowski that he doesn’t want to manage again this season. Not after the stress of the last 5½ years in Boston, and with the Red Sox owing him more than $13 million through 2027.
And maybe with the Phillies lacking a cleanup hitter, as even Dombrowski conceded on a pregame radio show last week.
“When I was asked if we have a cleanup hitter, nobody’s performed as a cleanup hitter,” Dombrowski said. “We’ve had people [Bohm and García] that have performed in the past as cleanup hitters. They’re not doing that right now.”
In any case, things might be different if Dombrowski traded Bohm off a 97-RBI season in 2024 and signed, say, Alex Bregman as a free agent. Or if he was more proactive about finding a righty-hitting outfielder instead of handing the role to Otto Kemp, demoted to triple A two weeks ago.
Dombrowski is likely going to the Hall of Fame after taking four franchises to the World Series. His recent work, however, might be described with the words that he used to characterize Bryce Harper’s 2025 season, irking his star player in the process: Not elite.
» READ MORE: Dave Dombrowski talked with Alex Cora about replacing Rob Thomson: ‘I thought that he might take it’
For four years, Dombrowski has overseen a period of extreme organizational continuity. The core of the roster, the manager, the coaching staff, the front office — none of it really changed, even amid annual October disappointments that followed regular-season success.
Perhaps a new voice in the manager’s office will make a difference, even if it isn’t the voice Dombrowski preferred.
Mattingly noted Tuesday that he managed the Dodgers in 2013, when they went from 9½ games out of first place on June 22 to winning the National League West by 11 games.
Dombrowski steadfastly believes the Phillies are capable of a similar turnaround, even after seeing how they’ve played so far.
“I can’t predict that some of these guys would have performed the way they have,” Dombrowski said. “But no, from a roster construction [standpoint], I don’t think we have a gaping hole.”
At least none that Dombrowski regrets not filling.
Hunter Pence's 368-day stint with the Phillies was a study in extremes. Acquired at the trade deadline in 2011 as the missing right-handed bat for a World Series contender, he got dealt a year later by an underachieving team. And with the Phillies in full-on crisis mode this week, Pence sits down with "Phillies Extra," the Inquirer's baseball podcast, to discuss how quickly a team's fortunes can change. Watch here.
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