Philadelphia Phillies’ Hiring Of Dave Dombrowski Changes Fortunes Of At Least Two Markets

For some time now, it has appeared as if Covid-19’s effect on the Philadelphia Phillies could be measured purely in terms of a reduced payroll.

But the hiring of Dave Dombrowski, announced by the club on Friday, makes clear that the ramifications of this life-changing year are still reverberating, and will for many years to come.

Just last week, Dombrowski had a policy of rebuffing any and all suitors for a potential president of baseball operations position — and that had included the Phillies. The job he had, and still holds even as he accepted Philadelphia’s offer, is with the group working to being Major League Baseball to Nashville. He and his wife, Karie, relocated to the city, and a Nashville Stars jersey stood watch over his Zoom press conference with reporters on Friday afternoon.

In his mind, Dombrowski said, the winter meetings, 2021, could be a time when MLB was ready to discuss either a relocation or expansion, and that meant a year ahead lining up investors, making plans to build a stadium, many big details in Music City. Then the commissioner’s office reached out on Monday.

“It’s a situation where the timing due to [Covid-19], the uncertainty space in the game, it wasn’t going to take place in the timeframe of 2021 presentations,” Dombrowski said. “And timeframe: to be determined. Pushed back a little bit.”

Suddenly, Dombrowski’s 2021 got a lot freer, and a reported four-year contract doesn’t make it sound like he’s a likely candidate to return to full-time Nashville work in 2022, either. That matters for Nashville, where an established, well-respected baseball executive like Dombrowski — his presence — takes the idea from the realm of the ephemeral into the concrete. It’s easier for a would-be investor to buy into the idea of the Nashville Stars when picturing Dombrowski in charge of that team. After all, he’s had four decades of doing just that for teams across the league, with a habit of taking them to World Series titles.

And any change in Nashville’s plans will have knock-on effects, too. In the case of expansion, that means bad news for cities like Portland, since MLB has tended, for scheduling purposes, to expand in pairs. And for cities worried about relocation prospects for its teams, Nashville looming as ready with Dombrowski, a 2021 stadium deal and momentum provides a greater threat than it will, at least in the short-term, with Dombrowski running operations in Philadelphia.

That part about Dombrowski taking teams to world championship titles, though, it’s a big deal in Philadelphia, still with just two of them in the trophy case despite an existence that dates back to 1883. For this Phillies team, then, there is direction, if not “unlimited amount of funds”, as Dombrowski said, calling it a retool rather than a rebuild.

“I mean, I think there’s too many good players on the club,” Dombrowski said. “And the way I looked at it, we have a star player in right field in Bryce [Harper] and some other good players around him. But anytime you have three good starting pitchers like we have at the top of the rotation, you’re in pretty good shape to be competitive.”

That the new head of baseball ops mentioned a group that includes Zack Wheeler would throw further cold water on the idea that the Phillies might consider trading him for financial reasons, a report already shot down by the team’s owner, John Middleton. Even though Dombrowski said he expects payroll to go down — citing the team’s number of free agents as cause, though clearly the team could, in theory, spend that same money on other free agents — he did sound hopeful about retaining catcher J.T. Realmuto, who would be the most devastating of losses among the 2020 roster.

“I know what it is now, where it is,” Dombrowski said of the team’s payroll. “There’s flexibility to do things. But I think we’ll look at each and every move in an intelligent fashion and if something makes sense, we’ll react to that.”

More than the financial picture, which will dictate much of how the Phillies can build from 2020’s flawed team, the presence of Dombrowski brings a clear line of authority and a planner to lead it. It’s unsurprising that Philadelphia kept reaching out to him, given how neatly he fits the needs of the franchise at this time.

When asked about what governs his philosophy to this day, Dombrowski began by citing power arms, and certainly the trio of Aaron Nola, Wheeler and Zack Eflin qualify, along with top prospect Spencer Howard, who made his debut in 2020. For the Phillies, though, a clear and obvious way to improve is the bullpen. It’s hard to believe that the 2020 relievers — with a 7.06 ERA for the season — delivered such a performance.

Put another way: for a Phillies team in contention until the season’s final weekend despite that, simply finding the arms to turn the bullpen into a group capable of league-average work, assuming all other production stays the same or improves, would make the Phillies 2021 contenders.

And with the glut of bullpen arms on the free agent market, and few teams spending, that could be the easiest way to fix this team of all, even as he pointed out that this Phillies team needs more than just a closer and an eighth-inning guy, with bullpen depth more important than ever. But the man who’s built bullpens around fireballing Craig Kimbrel and changeup artist Todd Jones, among many others, is clearly capable of doing the job in the ways the market allows, rather than following some unalterable formula.

“I think now the negative part is our bullpen needs a lot of fixing, we have some holes,” Dombrowski said. “The positive part is that it’s an opportunity. So if we’re aggressive, I would, if you’re a reliever and you have a choice of A or B, and A’s got a pretty good bullpen and B is us, and it’s not good. Well, hopefully people are choosing us, because there’s opportunity here.”

That’s the larger message from Dombrowski all afternoon — that there’s opportunity in Philadelphia, a franchise he called “a sleeping giant” with good reason. And where Dave Dombrowski has gone, success has followed, while the reverse has held true as well.

Accordingly: Dombrowski to Philly is good news for the Phillies. And for Nashville, even though Dombrowski reiterated he thinks it’s a matter of when, not if for MLB to come to the city he lives in, that when just got pushed further back toward the horizon.