The Philadelphia Phillies are going to be just fine ... right? There has been a lot of hand-wringing over a largely successful season to date: It's not like second place and a 17-14 record is over-the-moon awesome, but it's a solid start compared to past iterations of this Phillies team. Last season aside, Philadelphia tends to come out of the gate slow and end strong.
There is no denying the talent Dave Dombrowski has compiled. Kyle Schwarber, Trea Turner and Bryce Harper remains one of the very best offensive cores in MLB. The pitching rotation is stacked; if Aaron Nola settles into his groove and Ranger Suárez gets back up to speed quickly, you won't find a more impenetrable six-man slate in the National League. Not with Taijuan Walker pitching like he has been — for the most part.
And yet, there are still issues at hand, and the Phillies do feel vulnerable in a few key areas. None more so than the bullpen, which lost a couple high-leverage arms this past offseason in Jeff Hoffman and Carlos Estévez.
Dombrowski's efforts to replenish Philadelphia's bullpen depth left much to be desired. Joe Ross has been a fine swingman for the majority of his career, but that's about it. Jordan Romano arrived on a one-year, $9 million contract, bringing All-Star pedigree in place of the Phils' departed late-relief aces. And yet, after an injury-plagued 2024 campaign that saw Romano's impact plummet, it was fair to be a little more than skeptical.
That skepticism has since turned to outright disdain among the fanbase.
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Phillies picking Jordan Romano over Jeff Hoffman was an avoidable mistake for Dave Dombrowski
Philadelphia essentially swapped closers with the Toronto Blue Jays. The Jays let Romano walk after his disastrous season, instead turning to Jeff Hoffman with a three-year, $33 million offer sheet. That occurred after Atlanta and Baltimore both nixed more lucrative deals due to concerns about Hoffman's medicals.
The Phillies were never really in deep conversations with Hoffman about a new deal. Dombrowski claims Philadelphia "aggressively" pursued a reunion, but after the Romano signing, those talks were dead in the water.
It's clear the Phillies did not want to spend multiple years of capital on a reliever, but this read as a blatant mistake in the moment. It has only gotten worse since the season began, however, as what little hope fans had for a Romano resurgence is out the window. We can't write the book of the 2025 campaign in May, but Romano has been stripped of high-leverage duties and banished to last-resort status within a couple months of his Phillies debut.
Through 12 appearances and 10.1 innings pitched, Romano has allowed 15 hits, six walks and 14 earned runs, boasting an abysmal 12.19 ERA and 2.03 WHIP. There are a few semi-positive indicators — Romano is still in the 82nd percentile for whiff rate and the 74th percentile for exit velocity — but it's otherwise bleak. He just does not have the same stuff he did a few years ago, and Philadelphia has already more or less given up on him as a true closing option.
Meanwhile, Hoffman is on track for his second straight All-Star berth as a Blue Jay, logging a 1.17 ERA and 0.59 WHIP across 13 appearances and 15.1 innings. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more dominant reliever in the sport right now, so the Phillies blew it quite spectacularly.