In moving on from Harrison Bader, the Phillies are putting an awful lot of faith in Justin Crawford

The scariest day of the offseason is always the one when Dave Dombrowski looks at his roster, smiles, and says, “Yep, that’ll do.”

On Tuesday, Christmas came earlier than usual for next year’s trade-deadline sellers.

“We feel very good,” said Dombrowski. “I guess we’d look for arms in the bullpen. But we’ve also got five solid guys out there that are of veteran status. Sometimes, you have to give some young guys an opportunity. We have some guys that we like. So that’s really where it stands. And maybe depth at different positions. We’re dealing with that. But I think as far as our everyday positional players — other than catcher — we’re pretty well set.”

» READ MORE: Adolis García could be the new Nick Castellanos, and he looks the part. Uncomfortably so.

[JUMP CUT TO MAY 2026, THE CITIZENS BANK PARK SCOREBOARD]

VISITOR — 000 000 03X | 3 5 0

HOME — 100 000 0XX | 1 2 0

[THE CAMERA ZOOMS OUT SLOWLY, REVEALING A PLAYER IN A GRAY JERSEY CIRCLING THE BASES AS A PHILLIES RELIEVER STANDS ON THE MOUND WITH HIS SHOULDERS SLUMPED, STARING BLANKLY INTO THE MIDDLE DISTANCE]

NARRATOR: (gravely) As it turned out, they weren’t pretty well set.

It goes like this every year, doesn’t it? Opening day arrives and a month or two later the Phillies realize they could really use one more right-handed bat and another reliever or two. Maybe this will be the year that breaks the cycle.

Or, hey, maybe we’ve been looking at the offseason wrong this whole time. Maybe the whole point of the thing is to remind us what it feels like to believe. That Adolis García will be the player he was at 30 years old instead of the player he was at 31 and 32. That Justin Crawford will go from being a player who didn’t deserve a big league roster spot over Max Kepler to one who will be an impactful piece of the Phillies lineup and play a good center field to boot. That the bullpen will transform into a dominant unit instead of one that has allowed 25 runs and 21 of 26 inherited runners to score in the Phillies’ last eight postseason games.

It’s a magical time of year, isn’t it? Maybe we are the grinches.

There’s some truth to it. As Dombrowski has said before, there is no such thing as a perfect roster. The team you bring into opening day is much more the sum of all previous offseasons than it is the product of the most recent one. The Phillies have spent a lot of money in the five years since they hired Dombrowski as president of baseball operations. Most of those expenditures are still on the books and occupying roster spots in the lineup, rotation, and bullpen. It’s easy to watch the Dodgers drop $69 million on Edwin Díaz and wonder why the Phillies can’t do the same. But there are 20-plus teams saying the same about the Phillies as they watch Kyle Schwarber re-up for five years and $150 million.

Using the Dodgers as a benchmark can skew reality. The Phillies have improved their regular-season win total in each of Dombrowski’s first five seasons at the helm. Not only did they win 96 games last season, but they scored 31 more runs and allowed 37 fewer than they did in 2022, when they went to the World Series. Those results don’t necessarily align with the narrative that says the Phillies are a team in the midst of a steady decline.

As long as we assume that the Phillies eventually come to terms with J.T. Realmuto and fill their gaping void at catcher, they will enter 2026 with a sensible roster that is well within the range of outcomes we should have expected heading into the offseason. García is a decent bet to be an improvement over Nick Castellanos, pairing good defense, decent speed, and better power with his free-swinging approach. In left field, the Phillies will presumably begin the season with Brandon Marsh and perhaps Otto Kemp and keep an open mind from there. A little bit of flux can be a good thing, perhaps preserving an opening to get a look at a prospect like the lefty-hitting Gabriel Rincones at some point down the road.

» READ MORE: Phillies give the incomparable Kyle Schwarber an incomparable contract, still need another big bat behind him

The biggest potential weakness in the Phillies’ approach is the extent to which they will be counting on Crawford, whom Dombrowski indicated would report to spring training as the leading candidate to man center field. Nobody is expecting the 22-year-old to hit .334 with a .411 on-base percentage, as he did last season in 506 plate appearances at triple-A Lehigh Valley. He won’t even need to come close to those marks to warrant an everyday role. But he will need to warrant that role, or else the Phillies’ outfield situation will look a lot closer to what it did during the first half of last season vs. the competent unit it became as Kepler emerged and Harrison Bader joined up.

The big risk the Phillies are taking is in moving on from Bader. The center fielder was such an obvious fit after his trade-deadline acquisition from the Twins that you can’t help but think that they will enter next July looking for another similar player. The obvious question: Why not just do it now?

The first answer is money. Bader is reportedly looking for a three-year deal at $10 million to $15 million annually. That’s a steep price to pay a 31-year-old player with an injury history who is coming off his first season of 500-plus plate appearances.

The second answer is Crawford.

“If you’re going to give Crawford an opportunity, you’ve got to give it to him,” Dombrowski said. “And that’s where we are. We’re going to give him an opportunity to go out there and have a chance to play a lot.”

Where they are is the place they usually are, and one that is the fate of most teams when pitchers and catchers report.

Hoping for the best.