Dave Dombrowski is the Phillies president of baseball operations. (Cheryl Pursell)
Despite the Phillies’ lackluster start to the highly anticipated 2023 season, Dave Dombrowski won’t be looking to sell at this year’s trade deadline.
As reported in Ken Rosenthal’s latest notebook on The Athletic on Wednesday, Philadelphia’s president of baseball operations isn’t pushing the panic button or thinking about blowing it up. After making a run to the World Series last fall, Dombrowski thinks this Phillies team can compete again, and his deadline plans reflect that.
At 29-32, the Phillies haven’t gotten off to the start they hoped for coming off an exciting postseason run and making offseason additions like the splash for star shortstop Trea Turner. They’ve struggled early due to a combination of injury and underperformance.
As Rosenthal noted, there are some similarities to the 2015 Tigers team that Dombrowski ran, deciding that July to trade away some key contributors. But the veteran executive believes this Phillies team can turn it around in a way he didn’t see happening in Detroit.
“We watched that club,” Dombrowski said of that Tigers team. “It never could get going. It would go a little bit, but it would sputter. It just was in my heart that we weren’t quite good enough. But we’re far away from that type of statement here.”
Riding a four-game winning streak, the last two coming against Detroit, the Phillies have shown life recently. They started slow in a similar way last season, fired manager Joe Girardi, then went on to make additions at the deadline for players like Brandon Marsh, Noah Syndergaard and David Robertson that helped them make a deep playoff run.
While there won’t be a managerial change coming this year, maybe the 2023 Phillies can follow a similar script as the Aug. 1 deadline approaches.
Must Read (Or Watch) Phillies Content
The Phillies announced a new member of their ownership group, Stan Middleman, on Tuesday. Here’s what you need to know about Middleman and what his role will be in the group from our own Tim Kelly.
Hall of Fame pitcher Fergie Jenkins, who started his career with the Phillies, will be honored with a statue in his hometown of Chatham, Canada, this weekend. Read The Athletic‘s Brittany Ghiroli’s feature on Jenkins and his “overdue” recognition from Wednesday.
The Philadelphia Inquirer‘s Matt Breen wrote a feature on Tuesday about former Phillies prospect Kelly Dugan, son of movie director Dennis Dugan, who’s still grinding in the Atlantic League after years away from affiliated baseball.
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