Six Days to the Deadline: Pitching, and a Bat That Can Hit a Lefty

The calendar says July 28, which means Dave Dombrowski has exactly six days to do what Dave Dombrowski does. The MLB trade deadline hits at 6 p.m. on August 3, and if you’ve watched this front office for more than a minute, you know the Phillies aren’t going to spend the next week standing still.

They’ve earned the right to be aggressive. Remember that slow start that had half of South Jersey ready to throw the season in the river? Since then the Phillies have played .641 baseball — a 104-win pace over 10 weeks — and clawed all the way back to within shouting distance of the Braves in the NL East. A division that looked gone in May is back within reach. That’s the context for everything that happens between now and Monday. This is a buyer’s deadline, and Dombrowski has already said as much.

The arms on the board

Two names keep surfacing on the pitching side: Kevin Gausman of the Blue Jays and Robbie Ray of the Giants. Both are veteran starters, both are pending free agents after this season, and both would give this rotation the kind of October-tested arm you want lined up behind the front of the staff. I like the logic. You don’t win a short series in October with hope and a bullpen game — you win it with starters who’ve been there, and the Phillies are shopping in exactly the right aisle.

You don’t win a short series in October with hope and a bullpen game — you win it with starters who’ve been there.Jake Sullivan

The number that should keep somebody up at night

But here’s the number that ought to keep somebody in the front office up at night. The Phillies’ right-handed bats are hitting .221 with a .280 on-base percentage and a .643 OPS this season — the lowest mark in all of baseball. Read that again. Not the lowest in the division. In baseball. When a lefty starts against Philadelphia, this lineup goes quiet in a way that will get you beaten in a playoff series, because come October, the good teams line up their best left-handers and dare you to prove you can hit them. Right now the Phillies can’t. A right-handed outfielder who can punish left-handed pitching isn’t a luxury add. It’s the difference between a nice regular season and a real run.

The good news is that Dombrowski knows all of this better than I do, and he’s never been shy about paying the price when he believes a team is close. This team is close. Alec Bohm and Kevin Gausman were both in the news cycle this week for a reason — the machinery is turning.

I keep thinking about the kids I see at the ballpark, the ones who grew up on the 2022 run and the near-misses that followed, wearing the jerseys, keeping score in the little books. They don’t want a prudent deadline. They want the Phillies to go get somebody. For once, the standings and the front office’s instincts are pointing the same direction.

Six days. Buckle up. Around here, deadline week is its own kind of holiday.

Based on reporting from The Good Phight, ESPN, MLB.com, MLB Trade Rumors and NBC Sports Philadelphia.