Phillies

What if Keeping Most of this Phillies Team Together is the Best Path Forward?

By Nick Piccone

Published: Oct 14th, 2025 · 1:50 PM EDT

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On Monday, it was reported that Rob Thomson will be returning as Phillies manager in 2026. That’s the first domino to fall in an offseason that’s likely to shake up the franchise.

Or will it?

There are two types of Phillies fans: the ones who want to blow it all up and start over, and the ones who just want to tweak some things while running some or most of it back. There certainly can’t be, and shouldn’t, anyone who wants to run the entire thing back. That’s just not what anyone wants to see.

However, the Phillies have some key pieces in place to make another run at a championship in 2026. They have some flexibility they didn’t have last offseason, to their own fault. But we all know the best time of the season to peak is in October, because that’s when it matters most. The Phillies did that in 2022 and almost won a World Series. They did it for eight games in 2023 before an embarrassing collapse that we were eager to forget in 2024, when the collapse was a slower, plodding, excruciating disaster. There was hope in 2025, and even though all we care about is the series loss, a handful of plays decided it, and the Phillies were on the right side of it exactly zero times.

That’s why, if they’re serious about continuing to contend for a championship, they should consider keeping as many of the players as possible.

I think it’s highly likely the biggest names we won’t see on the 2026 Phillies include Nick Castellanos, Alec Bohm, and Max Kepler. Even though everybody else is confident Ranger Suárez is going to land elsewhere, I think his dawg mentality and October acumen should seriously be considered as the driving force for Dave Dombrowski to find a way to re-sign him. Despite the depth of the pitching staff, losing a guy like Suárez could have a damaging effect, especially with Zack Wheeler’s 2026 still in limbo. 

Harrison Bader was the best outfielder the Phillies had in 2025, and he was here for two months. Brandon Marsh turned a terrible start into a fairly solid year. J.T. Realmuto is probably the best catching option available, and the Phillies have no real prospects at that position. He also is a huge part of why the pitching staff has been successful, minus his inability to frame close pitches that miss their spot. There’s really no upgrade there unless you make some sort of blockbuster trade, but that likely means parting with guys who Dombrowski refused to part with at this year’s deadline. It just doesn’t make sense, especially if you’re losing money off the books anyway.

As much as Orion Kerkering’s struggles have been a weakness in the bullpen, he is still a young arm and still has good stuff. He officially hit the lowest point of his professional career thanks to his teammates who couldn’t hit a baseball for the last two-plus years when the lights were the brightest. He showed flashes after struggling a bit early in the season, and didn’t look entirely overmatched against the Dodgers if we’re viewing it objectively. The problem is, with the way the season ended, that’s incredibly hard to do. However, he faced the music right after, and that tells me something. We obviously don’t know if it’s going to be a good thing or a bad thing, but I’d rather keep a low-cost, high-reward guy and spend elsewhere.

Speaking of spending elsewhere, a few months ago there was absolutely no doubt in our minds that the Phillies would re-sign Kyle Schwarber. After four games in October, and a couple subpar weeks at the end of the regular season, there are now some who certainly don’t want the Phillies to just acquiesce to whatever number he wants. But there’s no hitter available in Major League Baseball who can replace Schwarber’s production. The Phillies are not trading for Shohei Ohtani. And while Schwarber is getting older, he’s the consensus clubhouse leader. They already decided not to bring back Rhys Hoskins when he became a free agent. Bryce Harper isn’t exactly the clubhouse leader type in the way we’ve seen from Hoskins and Schwarber. Would Dombrowski let the best clubhouse leader he’s ever seen walk? I don’t see the rationale unless it’s a complete blow-up. Plus, why would Schwarber want to leave Citizens Bank Park?

The Phillies won 96 games. They’re a very good team with very good coaches. They do a lot of dumb things in between the lines. The criticism of Thomson’s management is getting more vocal. But despite all that, they still went toe-to-toe with the Dodgers and received a lot of praise from Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman:

“I think the biggest thing is the stuff that the Phillies threw at us obviously was really good. But even beyond that, I thought the execution was as good as it can possibly be. So I think the combination of those things lining up – look, if a pitcher who has really good stuff executes at an A+ level, hitters aren’t going to hit. Hitting is way too difficult. It’s about hitting mistakes more than not. And they executed it on him at an elite rate. So could some swing decisions help and potentially get a mistake? For sure, but I think it was the most impressive execution against a hitter I’ve ever seen.”

This is not meant to erase the sting we still feel from another early October exit, but… did the Phillies just run into a buzzsaw? The Diamondbacks weren’t a buzzsaw. The Mets, while being maybe the hottest team in the league heading into the 2024 Playoffs, were two outs away from being eliminated in the Wild Card round. The Dodgers are *the* buzzsaw.

The Phillies are still built to win now. So, would you rather retool and try again? Or blow it up and rebuild? Before the announcement that Thomson would return in 2026, I thought that keeping most of this team together is the best chance to win next year. Yes, I want to see guys like Crawford and Miller and Painter, but there are 162 games. Health plays a role. We might see all of them in 2026. We’ll certainly see them in some fashion at some point. But even if we’re terrified of going back to the 2012-2021 era, the team is certainly in a better position talent-wise down on the farm than it was then. Thomson’s return signifies to me that if they’re not going to run it back completely, they’ll take a light jog.