Author: David Murphy

Well, it finally happened.

The Mets made a move that makes sense.

Freddy Peralta is the kind of acquisition who can change expectations in a hurry. The Phillies know it as well as anybody. They’ve scored three runs in four starts against Peralta since 2022. Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber, and Trea Turner are a combined 2-for-26 with 10 strikeouts against the veteran right-hander in that four-year stretch. They’ll go from facing him once or twice a year to potentially three or four times now that the Mets have shipped a couple of top-100 prospects to the Brewers in exchange for the 29-year-old Peralta, who had a 17-6 record last season, with a 2.70 ERA and 204 strikeouts in 176⅔ innings.

Wednesday’s trade is the second straight salvo the Mets have fired in the Phillies’ direction. The first was a gut-punch in the form of a three-year, $126 million contract signed by Bo Bichette. The Phillies thought they were about to land the former Blue Jays star on a seven-year, $200 million deal. Instead, the Mets unveiled their unique and devastating spin on the notion of addition by subtraction. Needless to say, it has been a rough week for the Phillies’ NL East odds.

But let’s not go overboard here. While Major League Baseball doesn’t hand out trophies for sensibility, it also doesn’t hang banners for offseason champs. Offseasons are pretty much the only thing the Mets have won in the 40 years since the ’86 Amazin’s did their thing. They are going to need a lot of things to break right for that to change this year.

It should be almost impossible for a team to enter spring training with a projected $360-plus million payroll and Jorge Polanco batting cleanup. Yet that’s exactly where the Mets find themselves with three weeks to go before pitchers and catchers report. The Mets can argue all they want that Polanco is a much better value on a two-year, $40 million deal than Pete Alonso would have been on the five-year, $155 million deal that he signed with the Orioles. But Alonso has hit 72 home runs over the last two years, while Polanco has hit 72 over the last four.

And what about the five-hole? Right now, you’d probably pencil in Marcus Semien there. Which would be great, if “right now” was 2023. But Semien has looked nothing like the guy who finished third in MVP voting for the Rangers during their World Series campaign. In 2024 and 2025, the 35-year-old infielder slashed .234/.307/.379 for a .686 OPS that was almost exactly league average. Semien, whom the Mets acquired from Texas in a trade, is making $26 million this year.

Luis Robert Jr. could work his way up in the lineup if he hits like he did over his last 35 games last season (.819 OPS, six home runs, 140 plate appearances). Or, he could be a $20 million eight-hole hitter if he hits like he did over the last two seasons overall (.660 OPS, 28 home runs, 856 plate appearances).

There’s no question the Mets have succeeded in building themselves a different lineup. Francisco Lindor and Juan Soto are the only name-brand holdovers from a year ago. Brett Baty figures to start at designated hitter after the former top prospect rescued his career with a .311./.372/.500 batting line and seven home runs in his last 42 games. Mark Vientos can only hope to factor into the equation after a season in which he failed miserably to follow up on his 2024 breakout. Again, there are things that can break right. But a team’s win total usually has a negative correlation with the number of “ifs” it brings to spring training. And that likely would have been the case with the Mets, until Wednesday.

In Peralta and second-year sensation Nolan McLean, the Mets will have the kind of 1-2 punch atop their rotation that can carry a questionable lineup a long way. In two starts last year, McLean held the Phillies to one run and 14 base runners in 13⅓ innings with 11 strikeouts. Combine his numbers with Peralta’s against Schwarber-Harper-Turner and you get 3-for-40 with 14 strikeouts. If Sean Manaea can get back to his 2024 form (3.47 ERA in 181⅔ innings) and Kodai Senga can stay healthy, the Mets could be a big problem for opposing lineups. And that’s assuming they don’t make another late splash (Framber Valdez, for instance).

But, then, there’s that pesky little word again. The Mets may yet salvage their offseason and move the needle in a more decisive manner. For now, Phillies fans shouldn’t be too hard on Dave Dombrowski’s roster. It’s still better than the Mets, for about 80% of the price.

Well, that was fun. You can be mad that the Phillies didn’t sign Bo Bichette or you can be grateful for all the takes you heard along the way. However things turn out for the 2026 Phillies, you’ll always have those two weeks in winter when you could dream of a better tomorrow. No amount of money and opt-outs can take that away from you. Don’t you forget that.

Truth is, Bichette was always likely to turn out to be an illusion. The narrative won’t be spun that way. The reports emerging in the immediate aftermath of the Mets’ agreement with the former Blue Jays star on a three-year, $126 million contract suggest the Phillies thought they were on the verge of signing Bichette to a seven-year, $200 million deal. But that’s more a misreading of the state of play than it is reality.

If the Mets were willing to offer Bichette these kinds of terms, and Bichette was intent on taking the best deal for his personal finances, the Phillies weren’t going to sign him. Both of those outcomes were more likely to be the case than Bichette accepting a long-term deal that the Phillies felt made fiscal sense.

That’s true — and always was true — for two reasons. The Mets are operating with a different definition of fiscal sense. They are also operating with a different level of urgency, given the departures of Pete Alonso, Jeff McNeil, and Edwin Diaz and their failed pursuit of Kyle Tucker. The Phillies could fail to sign Bichette and still have more or less the same roster that won 96 games last season. For the Mets, Bichette might have been their only hope at coming out of this offseason with a roster that looks to have improved over last year’s disappointment. Necessity plus wherewithal equals motivation. It’s tough to win a bidding war from a weaker position.

That’s not to say the Phillies were played for fools. If three years and $126 million with two opt-outs is what it took to prevent Bichette from signing with the Phillies, then the Phillies had a very real chance. Because three years and $126 million and two opt-outs is a borderline irresponsible deal. So much so that the Phillies couldn’t even think about structuring a long-term deal that would have beaten it.

Even if Bichette doesn’t opt out, he will reenter free agency at the age of 30 needing to sign a four-year, $75 million deal to come out ahead of where he would have been had he accepted the Phillies’ reported seven-year, $200 million offer. If he opts out after next year, he’ll need six years and $159 million, heading into his 29-year-old season. Kyle Schwarber just landed five and $150 million heading into his 33-year-old season.

The one silver lining for the Phillies is the price their division rivals will pay for very little upside. A lot of Bichette’s value is his youth — but the Mets aren’t getting any of that value given that he can become a free agent after next season. They are only getting the downside risk that Bichette’s value craters, in which case he won’t have been worth anywhere close to $42 million for one season and they’ll also owe him an additional two years and $84 million.

There is a reason the Phillies don’t like to include opt-outs in deals. They pretty much eliminate the ability to recoup value on your investment. Imagine if Zack Wheeler had opt-outs in his original five-year, $118 million deal with the Phillies. Basically, the Mets either win a World Series this season because of Bichette or they are right back where they started.

The Phillies can hardly stand on principle when it comes to fiscal moderation. But they are clearly in a different realm from the Mets or the Dodgers. I guess you can feel good about the fact that they will need to win games the old-fashioned way, relative to the competition. Let’s go, J.T. Realmuto!

There is a long list of reasons that you shouldn’t waste your daydreams on visions of Bo Bichette wearing red pinstripes and hitting behind Bryce Harper. The Phillies’ reported interest in the Blue Jays star only barely distinguishes them from the 29 other major league teams that likewise are interested in signing very good baseball players at the right price. Interest is not a differentiator. You can’t buy a Bentley with affection.

Circumstance, context, and logic suggest that Bichette will end up signing elsewhere. And that’s great if you’re into those things. The rest of us will be over here indulging ourselves. On the 12th day of Christmas, the New York Post’s Jon Heyman gave to us a vaguely worded, thinly sourced report connecting the Phillies to a big-ticket free agent. What are we supposed to do? Underreact?

The least we can do is try to proceed with some level of dignity and decorum. This often is easiest to do under the guise of asking questions. There are no dumb questions, only dumb questioners, right? So let’s fire away.

Only a few weeks ago, Dave Dombrowski sounded like a man who didn’t expect any more major additions to his roster. What would have caused that to change? Is Bitcoin about to spike again?

This is the however-many-million-dollar question. Five weeks out from pitchers and catchers reporting, the roster looks pretty close to set. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reported Monday that the Phillies still were in the market for another right-handed-hitting outfielder, which is encouraging, because they really could use a viable Plan B in case Justin Crawford turns out to be late-stage Juan Pierre or Ben Revere. They don’t need anything major. Veteran Randal Grichuk, whom the report mentioned specifically, would make a lot of sense. Otherwise, there isn’t an obvious opening that would compel the Phillies to make an offer with the sort of necessity premium that often distinguishes a winning bid from the rest.

One thing that may have changed is Dombrowski’s evaluation of the market. Not much has happened since the last time he spoke. Not only do most of the major free agents remain unsigned, we aren’t even seeing smoke. Bichette, Cubs outfielder Kyle Tucker, Red Sox third baseman Alex Bregman, Yankees outfielder Cody Bellinger, Mariners third baseman Eugenio Suárez, not to mention Ranger Suárez and the rest of the starting pitchers … the complete lack of movement at the top of the market is abnormal.

We’ve seen slow-moving markets before. But there is some reason to believe that this one is reaching a point of collapse. The money may not be out there this year. Virtually all of the big-market teams already are at or above the luxury tax threshold with the money on their books. Last year, the Phillies were at a disadvantage because teams like the Mets, Red Sox, and Cubs were in payroll expansion mode. Other teams simply had more money to spend than they did. That may not be the case this year.

The Cubs still are a potential market maker, with roughly $80 million in space before the first luxury tax threshold. It shouldn’t surprise anybody if they make a flurry of moves that alters the current narrative about the NL landscape. Same goes for the Mets, who presumably have whatever money they would have paid to Pete Alonso and Edwin Díaz before both signed elsewhere. The Orioles are always lingering. The Blue Jays are pushing $300 million but seem to be operating with the taste of blood in their mouths. So there still is plenty of reason to doubt that the Phillies can win via aggression.

But there are a lot of players out there. And there don’t seem to be the usual dark-horse lurkers among the midmarket clubs. It’s worth noting the situation in Minnesota, where the Twins are shedding payroll as if they need to make rent. The middle class might be content to sit this one out, especially with next year’s labor talks looming.

So Bichette might be more affordable than the Phillies thought?

Yes and no. It’s awfully hard to project a contract for a player who is an anomaly in terms of his age (only 28 this season), career production (24 home runs per 162 games and 121 OPS+) and pedigree (Dante Bichette’s kid), but who also is less than a year removed from a brutal 18-month stretch in which he posted a .651 OPS in 651 plate appearances. Trea Turner’s career numbers were nearly identical (minus the steals) when the Phillies signed him to an 11-year, $300 million contract heading into his 30-year-old season. FanGraphs had Bichette projected at seven years and $189 million entering the offseason. ESPN recently updated its projection to five years and $150 million. If that second number is close to reality, the Phillies may well readjust their expectations.

What’s this about Bichette posting a .651 OPS in 651 plate appearances? Isn’t that a concern?

It is. But it also might be an opportunity, if other teams are worried. Once he snapped out of his funk early last season, Bichette was an MVP-level hitter. In his last 102 games, he hit .325/.372/.528 with 17 home runs. From the right side of the plate. While playing middle infield. He has always had the kind of skill set scouts drool over. Bichette’s contact rate ranked in the top 20% of qualified hitters last season. At 83.2%, it would have ranked third among Phillies regulars, behind Alec Bohm (87%) and Bryson Stott (86.1%). His chase rate also ranked at the high end of the spectrum — in a bad way. Only 18 qualified hitters chased more often: Bichette’s 37.9% ranked just behind Bryce Harper (38.1%).

That said, Bichette did make some steady progress last season. It’s fair to wonder if he emerged from his slump as a different hitter. Only 10 hitters in baseball had a lower strikeout rate after the All-Star Break — his 11.1% was a dramatic improvement over an already-solid roughly 15%. He coupled that with a huge boost in his walk rate, from an anemic 5.5% to a slightly-better-than-average 8.8%. If the Phillies think they can get a $250 million player for $175 million, that might change things.

Why wouldn’t the Blue Jays just match any offer?

I guess Christmas is over, isn’t it? Assuming Bichette likes Toronto, which seems to be the case, and the Blue Jays are willing to spend, which seems to be the case, the Phillies presumably would need to land Bichette the old-fashioned way: by guaranteeing him more than anybody else is willing to guarantee him. They have close to $60 million coming off the books next season and theoretically would be able to accommodate another big deal, biting the bullet on the luxury tax this season while freeing up $15 million to $20 million by trading Bohm and Edmundo Sosa and finding someone to pay a little bit of Nick Castellanos’ salary.

But, then, we’d be back where we started. Realizing that Bichette probably won’t be here.