The Phillies will be buyers in the runup to the MLB trade deadline on Aug. 2 because they have to be.
That doesn’t mean they should be.
Bryce Harper, who vows to return from thumb surgery to lead a playoff charge late in the season, has already called for team president Dave Dombrowski to make some deals.
“It should be a good deadline,” Harper told reporters on Tuesday afternoon, “if we do our job in here and get to where we need to be.”
The Phillies are getting there, even without Harper, who was having himself a second straight MVP season before his injury on June 25. They are 22-10 since Rob Thomson replaced Joe Girardi as manager, and 44-39 overall. More importantly, they are currently tied with the St. Louis Cardinals for the final playoff spot in the National League after their 5-3 win over the sad-sack Washington Nationals on Thursday.
And they face the Cardinals in a four-game series beginning Friday in St. Louis.
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So yes, the temptation would be to acquire a center fielder who can not only hit, but won’t take a circuitous route to a fly ball like Odubel Herrera did on Wednesday night. That misplay cost the Phillies in their 3-2 loss, and really, Herrera should have been designated for assignment long ago.
But look no further than the players on the roster who have been called up from the minor leagues this season as to why they shouldn’t go for broke. The young players have all contributed to this run. On Thursday, it was Darick Hall, who has 4 home runs in 31 at-bats at the major-league level since his call up last week.
Hall hit that fourth homer Thursday, off the foul pole in right field, to give the Phillies a 5-2 lead. He just missed another homer earlier in the game when his liner clanked off the wall in straightaway center, 401 feet away.
“I knew I hit it really good, but a little low,” Hall said. As it was, that double drove in the Phillies’ first run of the game after they fell behind 2-0.
Matt Vierling has rotated between the outfield and infield. On Thursday, he played third base. He doubled and scored. Put him in center field for the rest of the season in place of Herrera.
So instead of trading for players who could block Hall and Vierling from playing, the Phillies should trade or release some players to make sure Hall and Vierling and others keep playing.
If that means trading or benching players like Herrera, the homer-less Didi Gregorius, or even Rhys Hoskins or J.T. Realmuto, then do it.
The Phillies have succeeded with this strategy before.
In 2006, the Phillies seemingly gave up on the season by trading Bobby Abreu, David Bell and Cory Lidle. At the time, they were below .500. Those trades allowed young players like Shane Victorino and Jayson Werth to play more as they joined a young nucleus with Jimmy Rollins, Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Carlos Ruiz and Cole Hamels.
The Phillies missed the playoffs that season by one game. The next season, they began their five-year run of dominance in the NL East. They won the World Series in 2008 and returned in 2009.
The current nucleus is built around veterans like Harper and Kyle Schwarber, who has 27 homers at the midway point of the season, and pitchers Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola. Realmuto and Nick Castellanos have been disappointing so far, but the Phillies have more than $100 million invested in each of them.
So the younger guys like Hall, Vierling, Bryson Stott have to fill in the gaps. And they have.
“Darick’s been kind of a spark for us,” Thomson said. “He’s a pretty calm guy. He’s got a lot of poise, and he’s just out there playing baseball like he’s on the sandlot. That’s what I hope for all of our guys who come up (from the minors) − they just relax, they’re calm and treat it like they’re at Lehigh Valley and Reading.
“That’s tough, but that’s when you get the best performances.”
It’s the same way in the rotation. After Wheeler and Nola, the Phillies don’t have much.
Veteran Kyle Gibson was supposed to be the No. 3 starter, but he is coming off a game where he gave up homers to four straight batters. He hasn’t been a dependable third starter, and neither have Zach Eflin and Ranger Suarez, who are both on the injured list.
So the Phillies are left with Bailey Falter and Cristopher Sanchez to fill out the rotation. Then again, maybe not. Falter survived a rocky first two innings Thursday and lasted four innings, holding the Nationals to 2 runs. He did his job.
Then he was sent down to the minors after the game. Falter’s next start, originally scheduled for Tuesday in Toronto, could become a bullpen game. And really, the Phillies can get by like that for a while with the way the bullpen has been pitching.
Over the last 14 games, opponents are hitting below .100 against the bullpen. On Thursday, Jose Alvarado faced the heart of the Nationals’ order in the eighth inning in Juan Soto, Josh Bell and Nelson Cruz.
He struck them all out. In fact, Alvarado has struck out 14 of the last 23 batters he has faced with his 100 mph-plus fastball and 95 mph cutter.
“Focus on hitting the target, that’s it,” Alvarado said.
Sure, one can certainly point to the Braves’ deadline success last year as an argument for the Phillies to add to the roster before the deadline. The Braves had lost their best player for the season in Ronald Acuña Jr. Then they traded for four established hitters in Eddie Rosario, Joc Pederson, Jorge Soler and Adam Duvall.
The Braves ended up winning the World Series. Yet of those four players, only Duvall and Rosario, who has been injured most of the season, remain. The Braves are still among the top teams in the National League this season because Acuña is back and they have a young and solid team around him.
The Phillies, meanwhile, are top heavy offensively and in the pitching rotation.
They need the younger players to fill in.
“It’s been awesome,” Hall said. “A lot of the young guys, the back-end guys, we’ve come in and tried to bring as much energy as we could, and show off our skills.”
Maybe that takes the Phillies out of playoff contention in the short term.
But in the long term, the Phillies will develop a nucleus of young players like Hall, Vierling, Stott, and minor leaguers Logan O’Hoppe, a catcher, and pitching studs Mick Abel, Andrew Painter and Griff McGarry.
The Phillies are paying the luxury tax for the first time in their history, with a payroll approaching $240 million. If they keep trading for veterans, they’ll have the same top-heavy problem next year, but with everyone at least a year older.
That is not sustainable.
Contact Martin Frank at mfrank@delawareonline.com. Follow on Twitter @Mfranknfl.
