Philly Front Office

I don’t need to tell you, smart Phillies fan with eyeballs, that Taijuan Walker’s contract is bad. The day after the Phillies threw several burlap sacks with dollar signs at Trae Turner, Walker agreed to a 4 year $72m contract to leave the Mets. December 6, 2022, a day that will live in infamy, the day the Phillies did not get Juan Soto.

Overexaggeration? Absolutely…but not untrue. That day we were still drunk from the Turner news so we didn’t fully appreciate what happened. After all, spending other people’s money is awesome. We signed an average pitcher that we didn’t really need to be a 4th/5th starter. If you have the opportunity to screw your future on a replacement level pitcher, you have to do it, right? It should be taught in GM 101: even if a deal is defensible, you don’t tie up money when you don’t have to.

The deal WAS defensible too. $18m per year at the time wasn’t crazy (it is only getting worse too). Jameson Taillon signed basically the same deal with the Cubs the following day. Chris Bassitt got 3 years, $63m from Toronto. All 3 of these deals (and countless others) prove that you don’t spend your money on “just average” pitching, at least not for so many years. That summer Carlos Rodon signed for 6 years, Kodai Senga and Jacob deGrom went for 5 years, and that was it for longer deals than Walker. By acting too fast, the Phillies allowed themselves to get hosed.

Walker is a good person, but there is nothing in his track record that should have screamed long term piece. That is the problem here. A 4-year deal is a contract you want to build around. Instead, they are locked into someone who was completely replaceable at the time of signing. Plenty of quality pitching went for 1 or 2 year deals that winter and do so every year.

The rotation coming into 2023 was supposed to be Wheeler, Nola, Suarez, and Andrew Painter. We obviously needed someone, but it could have been anyone. We just needed a fill-in behind a solid top end. That anyone could have just as easily been 1 or 2 year guys like Nathan Eovaldi, Michael Wacha, or Wade Miley. Signing someone for 4 years locks you in for [checks notes] 4 YEARS!!!

I am not writing this to deep dive into how bad Walker has been in red pinstripes. You already know. I am writing it to stress that it was bad process. Instead of having that $18m free last year and this year, we still have 2 more years and $36m to go. Assuming Walker doesn’t come into spring training a new man, he is going to get cut. That means we just eat that money. Complete dead weight. His roster spot has more value for a replacement level player than for him. Do you think we could have done anything with that money right now?

Soto was probably never coming here, but because of the fat contract he is about to receive we were never even in the running. Depending on a few things the Phillies have about $30m-$50m to spend this off season. What if that number was around $50m-$70m? That is “let’s make a run at Soto” money or “buy yourself Corbin Burnes” money or “let’s take on Arenado for Ryan Helsley” money. That $18m could be another solid reliever or 2 that will not be on this team this year.

It isn’t really fair to kill a deal in retrospect because the player got hurt or someone didn’t live up to expectations. However, it is COMPLETELY fair to kill a deal that shouldn’t have been made in the first place. Dave Dombrowski is a legend, a Hall of Famer, and I do trust him, but this was his worst day at the helm of the Phillies.