Philly Front Office

By the end of the 2018 season, the Phillies were down bad. The previous year’s Jake Arrieta signing was a (predictable) flop, no previous trades had born fruit, the pipeline had been long dry save for Rhys Hoskins and Aaron Nola, and Gabe Kapler was constantly attempting to spin mediocrity as genius. Worst of all though, the team was boring.

Dave Dombrowski and His 1-Year Contracts

That winter though, the Phillies had big dreams. They had money to burn and a desire to take the defibrillator paddles to jump start a dead rebuild. The big target was Bryce Harper. This was his long planned for free agent winter and the incumbent Nationals made it clear that they had no intention of paying him a competitive salary. Oddly, his market was a bit off. For years, many assumed the Yankees would be his future destination, but they stayed out of the bidding. It was wide open. The Phillies just needed to give him a reason to come to Philadelphia. They needed to make the team a place that could compete for championships.

Things started innocently enough when the team traded for All-Star 2nd baseman Jean Segura, sending former top prospect JP Crawford and malcontent Carlos Santana to Seattle. A week later, former MVP Andrew McCutchen signed for 3/$50m. Not too long after that, David Robertson was brought in to be the closer for 2/$23m. All of that seemed good but they were periphery moves, nothing to move the needle in the Harper sweepstakes. Thankfully, as the new year turned into February, he was still available, but they were running out of time to…and I am not sorry for this… reel in a big fish.

On February 7, the Phillies sent top prospect Sixto Sanchez, Jorge Alfaro, and Will Stewart to the Miami Marlins for the best catcher in baseball, JT Realmuto. It was a blockbuster trade. JT had been floundering (still not sorry) in Miami on a team that was regularly non-competitive and very unlikely to sign him to an extension. After all, the team had just traded away back-to-back MVPs Giancarlo Stanton and Christian Yelich the previous winter.¹ Realmuto still had 2 years until free agency, but the writing is always on the wall with the Marlins.

Well, in a surely unbelievable coincidence, JT Realmuto just happens to be one of Bryce Harper’s good friends and favorite players in baseball. Would that be enough to convince the face of baseball to come to Philadelphia rather than Los Angeles or San Francisco? Three weeks later, on February 28th, we found out it was. Harper signed with the Phillies for a monster 13/$330m deal. The core of the next decade of Phillies baseball was formed.² Who knows if Harper would have signed with the Phillies if not for this trade?

February 28, 2019: Bryce Harper is a Phillies

So how did the rest of the guys in that deal do? The headliner was Sixto Sanchez. He was a tough prospect to give up because not only was a top 20 prospect in baseball, but between the great name and the filthy pitching, he had the makings of a fan favorite. Then he debuted for the Marlins in 2020 and dominated out of the gate. He had a 1.69 ERA through 5 starts, going 7 in three of them. Unfortunately, it never got better than that. Injuries ravaged his golden arm, and he didn’t make it back to the majors again until 2024 but he wasn’t the same. Jorge Alfaro, previously received in the Cole Hamels trade with Texas, had been the Phillies starting catcher, but was now redundant. Despite not being very good with the Phillies, those years were the high water mark for his career. Will Stewart never made the majors.

As for JT, he has been a staple in the middle of the lineup for the Phillies for the last 7 years and considered the best catcher in baseball for much of that. After his first 2 seasons, the team gave him a 5/$115.5m contract, the highest ever on an average annual basis for a catcher. In 2022, he put up legitimate MVP numbers with a 6.5 WAR and hit the game winning home run in extra innings of Game 1 in the 2022 World Series.

I might not be a fan of his most recent free agent deal, guaranteeing him three more years with the Phillies, but the Phillies won the original trade in a landslide.

1. Stanton won NL MVP in his last year as a Marlin and Yelich won the next season, his first as a Brewer ↩︎
2. Zack Wheeler would sign the following offseason ↩︎