Dave Dombroski Can End The Playoff Drought, But Will The Phils Be Better in the Long Run?
Besides the Seattle Mariners, no team in the MLB needs a postseason birth as badly as the Phillies. The last moment of October baseball remains Ryan Howard’s Achilles tearing up in the last out of the infamous 1-Bloody-Nil game, a bitter end to the most glorious era in team history. The Phils endured five years of total irreverence following that game and then a few bitterly disappointing seasons under Matt Klentak and Gabe Kapler. The ultimate humiliation came in 2020 when an above .500 record was enough to make the expanded tournament with a competent manager, and the Phillies weren’t even good enough to do that.
For a decade the Phils were trapped in purgatory, thinking they were about to enter Heaven but instead entered Hell. No general manager but Matt Klentak still in the building, Andy MacPhail not wanting to uproot during a pandemic, John Middleton and the organization being strapped for money, and the great Dick Allen passing away before getting a call to the Hall of Fame (at least we can give Middleton credit for retiring his Number 15 this year.)
2020’s been a bleak year, but it’s even bleaker for Phillies fans. But suddenly . . . an unlikely hero has arrived to potentially save the Phils. Longtime baseball executive Dave Dombrowski has been hired as the new President of Baseball Operations. Dombrowski’s track record as an executive is near Hall of Fame worthy having built the 1997 World Champion Florida Marlins, two AL Pennant winners for the Detroit Tigers, and the 2018 Champion Boston Red Sox.
Dombrowski’s reputation has been built with the ability to make moves that help teams win instantly, something the Phillies have been trying to do for a couple years to miserable failure. In arguably the most competitive division in the MLB, the Phillies need great play just to be in the conversation for the playoffs.
The only issue with Dombroski’s win-now method is that his teams are left in the dust by the time he departs them. The Marlins notoriously went from World Champions to the worst team in baseball in a single season, thanks mostly to their owner Wayne Huizenga willingness to sell the team for a profit after buying them. Dombrowski then spent years trying to build a championship team for the Tigers partly because team owner Mike Ilitch and his desire to see his team with a World Series before passing away in 2017. The Tigers often came close, most notably in 2006, 2012 and 2013. Since leaving in 2015 Detroit has subsequently become the worst team in the American League over the past five years. And finally there’s the Red Sox who went all in and won the 2018 World Series as one of the best teams of the decade. But then in a flash Dombrowski was fired by Boston and they actually traded their face of the franchise Mookie Betts to the Dodgers.
As good as Dombrowski is in getting players in the short term, there is troubling track record of how those teams are in the long term. Though in his defense most of those issues seem to be ownership related. Of course the Phillies are already struggling financially so there’s not many lucrative contracts he can give out as he did in Detroit and Boston. Dombrowski himself made it clear that more work needs to be done than getting one great player.
Obviously if the Phillies do get that elusive World Series title in the next five years and are back in purgatory it’s probably all worth it. Just making the playoffs and ending that drought seems like enough, but will it feel that way if they’re back as they were in the mid-2010s?
Even with all that in mind, Dombroski’s arrival to the Phillies is a breath of fresh for the fans because the organization did something right for once. Like Doc Rivers, Darryl Morey and Joe Girardi, a Philadelphia team brought in an experienced figure who should bring stability and competency to the otherwise unstable organization. Hopefully this will lead to a Roaring 20s of Philly sports.
Dedicated to Dick Allen
