The Phillies, Like a Swarm of Mosquitoes, Cry Out for a Bat

Dear Readers:

I write to you from a place of hiding. The Phillies’ outfield situation has taken a turn for the worse, and the team has sent out a multitude of agents in response. The Phanatic and his lieutenants — green and fuzzy, mounted on quad bikes, armed with hot dog launchers — are now scouring the countryside in search of able-bodied right-handed adults. From Lancaster to Lakewood, from New Brunswick to New Castle, they maraud over hill and dale. If you own a baseball glove and can bat, you’re liable to be pulled from your bed in the dead of night and dragooned, press-ganged, and otherwise cajoled into service as the Phillies’ right fielder.

The inciting incident came on Wednesday night in Toronto, when Adolis García tweaked something while trying to throw George Springer out. The following day, the Phillies made a puzzling but likely inconsequential trade, sending prospects Dylan Campbell and Jose Colmenares to the White Sox for outfielder Derek Hill and $250,000 in international bonus money.

Colmenares is a non-prospect, but Campbell made it all the way up to 19th in the organizational prospect rankings over the winter, with a future value grade of 40. Seems like a lot to give up for Hill, who had bounced around six different teams (none of them any good) in parts of seven big league seasons. At the time of the trade, Hill had a major league slash line of .227/.278/.351 with a 30.8% strikeout rate. Having not thought much about Campbell since the offseason, I wondered if the Phillies would be better off just calling him up.

Unfortunately, that big month in the AFL hasn’t translated to Double-A, where Campbell is hitting .216/.281/.412 for a Reading team that plays in one of the most hitter-friendly parks east of the Mississippi. Hill is by no means a first-division starter, but he’s a career .269/.314/.458 hitter against lefties, and he can run well and play defense. You could do worse from a fifth outfield spot.

Plus, that $250,000 in bonus money is going to come in handy. The Phillies, long a team that’s been better at developing underscouted talent than landing big names, has been swimming in the deep end of the pool this year. They’ve already splashed $4 million on highly touted Venezuelan outfielder Francisco Renteria and $1.2 million more on Chan Min Park, a right-handed pitching prospect from South Korea. And they’ve been dealing from their upper-minors depth in order to free up extra bonus pool money along the way.

Then, on Friday, news broke that García’s injury was not just a mere hitch in his giddyap, but a torn latissimus dorsi. García went straight on the 60-day IL; to some extent that’s just in service of the Phillies’ clearing room on the 40-man roster, but it does not paint an optimistic picture of when García is bound to return.

So from a holistic perspective, this trade makes sense… wait, if the White Sox traded Hill away, does that mean they have way more outfield depth than the Phillies do right now?

Oh yeah, by a lot. And you might be inclined to think that this has something to do with the fact that the White Sox are good now — they and the Phillies are only half a game apart in the standings, or at least they would be if they didn’t play in different leagues.

It doesn’t. The Phillies are in a pretty bad spot right now when it comes to outfield thump, especially right-handed outfield thump.

The Phillies are a good team by almost any measure. They’re five games over .500, they’re in a playoff position, and they’re 29-14 after replacing Rob Thomson with Don Mattingly. But they’re quite unevenly constructed. Cristopher Sánchez just ripped off a 50 2/3 inning scoreless streak; his loss in Milwaukee on Sunday was his first in eight weeks. Zack Wheeler is somehow back to normal after returning from thoracic outlet syndrome at age 36, and Jesús Luzardo rounds out what is likely the best top three in baseball. Even with Aaron Nola and Andrew Painter white-knuckling through the last two spots in the rotation, the top three starters plus Jhoan Duran and the bullpen with the no. 1 K-BB% in the league make this a top-notch pitching staff.

On the offensive side: Kyle Schwarber is leading the league in home runs, Brandon Marsh is hitting .322/.356/.492, and Bryce Harper (.256/.364/.496) is answering Dave Dombrowski’s offseason challenge for him to be “elite.”

But even with those three key players cooking, the Phillies entered Sunday’s action 25th in baseball in runs scored and 27th in wRC+.

Every good Phillies team since about 2009 has been built on pitching first; it shouldn’t be too alarming if the offense runs hot and cold. This is something different.

I’ve taken the liberty of listing every Phillies position player with at least 50 plate appearances this season, sorting them by batting average and coloring the graph by each player’s batting side.

The first thing you’ll notice is that everyone south of Marsh, Harper, and Schwarber has stunk. There’s not a single .300 on-base percentage or .400 slugging percentage in the bunch. That’s what it takes to build a bottom-five offense with three guys who are hitting this well.

Some of this I think the Phillies were prepared to live with. Stott has been less than the sum of his offensive parts throughout his career, and he’s had some bad batted-ball luck. Even so, if the Phillies had an average offense, I don’t think anyone would care or even notice if Stott’s wRC+ were in the mid-80s. Crawford is a rookie with a weird offensive skill set: Once you commit to that guy, you have to give him lots of rope. Bohm is having his worst season since 2021, but he’s going through some brutal stuff off the field, so I don’t want to be too hard on him.

The rest of the Phillies’ offensive woes are the collapse of things they’re used to counting on. Sosa, previously one of the best utility infielders in the league and a key right-handed bat off the bench, has been awful. So has Realmuto, who suddenly seems incredibly old. Also, for all the hype around Schwarber’s MVP runner-up season last year, it was Turner who led Phillies position players in WAR; the only thing keeping him over replacement level right now is his baserunning.

And while García’s injury makes the Phillies worse, he had a 66 wRC+ when he went down, which is just not acceptable for a starting right fielder. If only someone could’ve told the Phillies that it was a bad idea to sign him in the first place.

In their defense, the Phillies don’t have a wealth of high-minors right-handed depth. (Certainly less than the White Sox have, as I’ve mentioned.) Last year’s right-handed corner bench guy, Weston Wilson, was lost to Baltimore on waivers in January. In his absence, the Phillies have tried five right-handed or switch-hitting utilitymen who can at least theoretically play in an outfield corner: Otto Kemp, Dylan Moore, Felix Reyes, Steward Berroa, and Gabriel Rincones Jr., who made his major league debut on Friday. Rincones didn’t play on Saturday or Sunday, so that means the only pitcher he’s faced in the big leagues was Jacob Misiorowski, on the best night of Misiorowski’s career. Poor guy. If nothing else, Rincones can take comfort from the fact that it will absolutely get easier from here.

Death by Miz being what it is, those five players have combined to hit .106/.156/.153, with one home run, four walks, and 31 strikeouts in 90 plate appearances. That’s a wRC+ of -17, and a WAR of -1.4.

Whatever you think of Hill, he can do better than that.

I don’t think Hill will be the last outfielder the Phillies acquire this season, because the internal options are dire.

Crawford and Painter are only two of the three big prospects the Phillies were counting on; the third was shortstop Aidan Miller, the no. 31 global prospect this winter. Miller has only ever played shortstop in the pros, but if he were playing well in the minors, the Phillies could plug him in at third base and move Bohm to right. Unfortunately, back issues kept Miller from getting started this season, and he’s now out until August, most likely, after undergoing radiofrequency ablation. So that’s the best right-handed hitter in the team’s minor league system off the table for the foreseeable future.

Johan Rojas was a fixture on the Phillies in 2023 and 2024; he’s as punchless a hitter as you’re likely to find getting serious plating time for a good team, but he’s a terrific defensive center fielder and a plus-plus runner. If Steward Berroa and the Four Seasons are going to hit .100 with no power anyway, you might as well stick a guy in there who can contribute in other ways.

Except, Rojas tested positive for Boldenone over the winter (and having seen his exit velo numbers, I can hardly blame him). And even though that suspension is running down to zero in the next couple weeks, Rojas tore the UCL in his throwing elbow and is getting season-ending internal brace surgery.

Other options in the high minors include some names you might have heard of: Bryan De La Cruz and Dylan Carlson. These are two of the players in recent major league history who play outfield defense in a fashion that makes me worry they’re going to injure themselves, and neither his hitting worth a lick right now. (Carlson is dragging around a .171/.272/.295 line at Triple-A Lehigh Valley.) The Iron Pigs’ star hitter, Keaton Anthony, has never played anywhere but first base in the pros. He’s probably not an option either.

I hear Nick Castellanos is looking for work again…

Here’s the thing: In theory, this is not a difficult problem to solve. I’ve harped on and on over the years about how total black holes in the lineup, like right field for the Phillies, can be a blessing in disguise. Changing a C to an A takes a huge prospect haul and hundreds of millions of dollars, if such an upgrade is even available to make. Changing an F to a C is a matter of throwing a few bucks or a player to be named later at the right 32-year-old platoon guy. The Phillies, with Harper and Schwarber and their bevy of pitchers, don’t need a superstar. They need a right-handed hitter with a clue at the plate and the ability to stand in right field without precipitating a public health emergency.

At the risk of invoking the White Sox again, Dombrowski would probably sell a kidney for Randal Grichuk right now.

Dombrowski has worked in baseball for almost 50 years, and run front offices for almost 40. His positive traits as a team-builder are as vast as his list of accomplishments.

That said, he has been horrendous at finding the right C-minus corner outfielder. And not for lack of trying. He’s been looking for someone to shield Marsh against tough lefties, or provide an offense-first alternative to Rojas, since mid-2022. He hit big on Harrison Bader at last year’s deadline, but that was very much the exception.

If you take out Schwarber, Marsh, and anyone who was originally signed or drafted by the Phillies as an amateur, Dombrowski has brought in 10 outfielders who have logged 50 or more plate appearances for the team since 2022.

It’s pretty bleak, and has been at least since Pache was starting playoff games in left field. Nevertheless, I’d expect to see the Phillies take at least one more swing on the trade or waiver market in the next six weeks. Dombrowski might be due. And even if he’s not, I don’t think he can make things any worse than they already are.