The Phillies were one of the teams mentioned a lot during the lockout. The team had spent up to the luxury tax threshold but didn’t go beyond it. There may be a good explanation for this though. The Phillies aren’t one of the top teams in the league, it’s that simple. The fact that the team did spend up to the threshold is amazing in itself because the Phils have no success to point to despite spending all of this money.
The Phils have put a ton of money in three players’ pockets, Bryce Harper, Zach Wheeler, and J T Realmuto. Those three players take up a large chunk of what the Phillies are spending on salaries. All are very good players mind you, but it didn’t add up to the Phillies making the playoffs yet.
So where do the Phillies go from here? We still saw what they have needed for the past couple of seasons, a reliable bullpen has to rank up at the top. With all of the games that poor bullpens have given up by the Phils, one can only wonder if they had been better, would the Phillies indeed be a playoff team.
There are several high-caliber free agents out there. Does this mean the Phils are going to sign one of them? Probably not at this time, this team is going to have to prove to ownership that it is going somewhere better than it has been. Chemistry is a huge part of winning baseball games, look at Tampa and see what they have done with a lot fewer salaries spent than some other teams that have spent a big sum of money like the Phillies have been spending and not getting a playoff return from.
Spending money and winning sometimes don’t add up is the moral of this article. Just like the 2008 World Series team proved, it was the chemistry of players, and they pulled that all together to make that season a magical one for them. Pitching, hitting and winning. It certainly wasn’t an assembly of high priced free agents that won it all in ’08.
