Bryce Harper has proven he is still elite. Now, it’s Dave Dombrowski’s turn.
Bryce Harper is still elite. The jury is out on Dave Dombrowski.
The funny thing about Bryce Harper’s 2026 world-wrecking tour is that he has somehow managed to both vindicate his boss and hang him over the dunk tank. There isn’t an executive in Major League Baseball that should be feeling more pressure than Dave Dombrowski now that Harper has answered fully and satisfactorily the infamous question that the Phillies president posed this offseason.
“Can he rise to the next level again?‚" Dombrowski said of Harper after the Phillies’ postseason loss to the Dodgers. “I don’t really know that answer.”
Eight months later, Dombrowski should know it better than anyone. The Phillies’ personnel boss has spent 84 games watching Harper bail him out of another failure of an offseason. One year after the Phillies’ superstar posted an .844 OPS that was his lowest since 2016, his current .915 OPS be his best since 2021, when he hit .309/.429/.615 with 35 home runs en route to winning his second MVP.
» READ MORE: Kyle Schwarber launches 30th homer of the season to lift Phillies past Mets
Harper’s 19 home runs in his first 83 games were his second-most as a member of the Phillies. His .391 wOBA ranked eighth in the major as of Saturday. His .278/.379/.536 batting line is pretty much exactly his career baseline. It is a lofty baseline. You might even call it elite.
While Harper might argue that retribution is a dish best served raw (like milk), his performance this season actually lends some credence to his boss’ offseason critique. Harper isn’t proving Dombrowski wrong. He is proving him right.
Fact is, Harper wasn’t an elite player in 2025. Between 2021 and 2024, Harper was one of five players in the majors with a wOBA of .390+. The other four were Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, Juan Soto and Yordan Alvarez. Add in Ronald Acuna Jr., Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts and those were the truly elite hitters in Major League Baseball.
In 2025?
Harper’s .361 wOBA ranked 25th, behind guys like Ramon Laureano (.364), Pete Alonso (.368) and Geraldo Perdomo (.370). That was Dombrowski’s whole point. You can certainly question whether it was an appropriate one to make. The under-the-hood numbers suggested that Harper’s “down” year was mostly attributable to chance.
There weren’t any significant dips in his hard hit rate or his strike out rate or his bat speed. He showed less signs of regression than most 32-year-old hitters. The Phillies could not have hoped for any better of a return on the first seven years of the 13-year, $330 million contract that Harper signed in 2019. As the old saying goes, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth and tell him he isn’t elite.
David Murphy alerts
At the same time, Dombrowski’s assessment was correct. In 2025, Harper’s production wasn’t in the same realm as a Judge or a Soto or an Ohtani. It just wasn’t. He was still a very, very good player. He just wasn’t a singular one.
Here in 2026, Harper is reminding us just how much of an impact he can make when he is elite. The Phillies have been the best team in baseball since the beginning of May despite a lineup that has five regulars who have been 30 percent worse than league average as measured by OPS+. Harper’s 146 OPS+ is more than twice as high as those of four of the six guys who hit behind him in the lineup.
The onus is now on Dombrowski to do his part.
As good as the Phillies have been since replacing Rob Thomson with Don Mattingly, any realist should wonder how good they’d be with a roster that wasn’t completely reliant on two MVP seasons at the plate, two Cy Young seasons in the rotation, and one of the best closers in the game ... and Brandon Marsh. It would be foolish for anybody to think that formula can carry them through a month of playoff baseball.
With just over a month to go until Major League Baseball’s trade deadline, Dombrowski and his front office better have a serious plan for broadening the team’s potential contributors for a postseason series against the Dodgers or Braves.
Even with Marsh’s All-Star-worthy season, the Phillies’ outfield entered Sunday with the sixth-worst collective OPS in the majors. At catcher, theirs is the second-worst OPS. They rank in the bottom five at third base and short stop and are 23rd at third base. But, hey, other than that they’ve been great.
Right now, Dombrowski’s offseason looks like a near-total failure. Adolis Garcia, J.T. Realmuto, Andrew Painter, Brad Keller, Justin Crawford — all received his stamp of approval as he tinkered with a roster that had suffered three straight playoff disappointments.
» READ MORE: Phillies won’t rush Andrew Painter’s return to majors. Instead, it’s about ‘getting himself’ right.
Even if you are willing to credit Crawford with being a perfectly adequate bottom-of-the-order hitter at a premium position in center field, the aggregate output of the offseason maneuvering still qualifies as a man-made disaster.
It may not be now or never. But it is getting close. The Phillies owe it to Harper, Schwarber, Zack Wheeler, Cristopher Sanchez and Jhoan Duran to aggressively address the holes that threaten to undermine one of the greatest efforts we’ve ever seen from five superstars in one season.
Harper is still elite.
The jury is out on Dombrowski.
Ricky Bottalico spouts opinions each day on sports-talk radio and the Phillies' television pre- and postgame show. But before all that, he had a solid career as a relief pitcher, even representing the Phillies in the 1996 All-Star Game at Veterans Stadium. With the baseball world set to descend on Philly again in a few weeks, Ricky Bo joined "Phillies Extra" to re-live his All-Star experience. Watch here.
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