Phillies

The Phillies’ Harrison Bader Situation is Tough

By Luke Arcaini

Published: Oct 28th, 2025 · 11:06 AM EDT

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JT Realmuto, Kyle Schwarber, and Ranger Suarez will all become free agents once the World Series concludes, but the Phillies’ biggest decision may come elsewhere.

Harrison Bader has a mutual option for 2026 at $10 million. The Phillies will accept the option, and Bader will decline it. You rarely see mutual options accepted from both sides anymore. Either the player has a bad year and tries to take the guaranteed money, or the player has a good year and tries to turn it into a multi-year deal.

Bader will certainly fall into the second scenario. The 31-year-old outfielder posted the best season of his nine-year career, slashing .277/.347/.449 with a .796 OPS and a 4.2 WAR in 146 games with the Twins and Phillies. Bader really hit his stride once he was traded at the deadline, hitting .305 with an .824 OPS, 1.4 WAR, and 54 hits in 50 games.

The Phillies outfield has been below average for a couple of years. There are probably some worse adjectives you could use to describe it. It’s a group that will be retooled this offseason. Nick Castellanos will reportedly be traded or cut. Max Kepler won’t return to Philly. That’s two of your three starting outfielders from NLDS Games 2 through 4.

Bader was finally a sigh of relief for a bad Phillies outfield. His .824 OPS felt like a 1.100 OPS with how the outfield experience has gone over the last few years. He was a spark that the Phillies needed. He was himself, he walked around in crop tops, and he didn’t care. He was one of the quickest-embraced players in Philadelphia that we’ve seen in a while.

After going down with a groin injury in NLDS Game 1, Bader never got to make another start. He pinch-hit in Games 2 and 4. That’s how the best three months of his career ended.

The Phillies have a decision to make. What version of Bader will be on the field in 2026? Will it be the Bader that didn’t eclipse a .673 OPS since 2021? Or will it be the electric factory that we saw for three months in South Philly?

Bader has never been an elite overall player, but more of a third/fourth outfielder. He was the #1 option on the Phillies roster once he arrived. It says a lot about his play in the second half of the year, but also the state of the Phillies’ outfield.

Some team will offer Bader more money, and the Phillies may be better off with that happening. How much can you overpay for an athlete that could fall back to his old self? If there was a guarantee that Bader would be his August-to-October self for the next two years, the Phillies would give him a deal instantly, but that’s not the case.

Contract options have to be decided five days after the World Series concludes, so we’ll know the situation sooner rather than later. Expect Bader to decline the mutual option and seek a multi-year deal in free agency. Could it be from the Phillies? Possibly. Luckily for Bader, the best stretch of his career came in a “contract year.” He’ll earned some deserved money this offseason for igniting a Phillies outfield that felt dead.