This Team Should Stop Trading With Philadelphia Phillies

In a weird way, the 2024 Philadelphia Phillies owe a lot of their success to the AL East.

If the Boston Red Sox hadn’t foolishly fired Dave Dombrowski in 2019, he might not have found his way to the Phillies the following year. Dombrowski quickly turned things around in Philadelphia after becoming their president of baseball operations in late 2020, assembling a team that reached the World Series in 2022 and has MLB’s best record this season.

The Phillies’ dominant pitching staff has been a big reason for their success this year. Notably, three key pitchers were acquired through trades with the Tampa Bay Rays.

The first and most important of those trades happened after the 2019 season, when Philadelphia traded Curtis Mead to the Rays for Cristopher Sanchez straight up.

While both were prospects at the time, the Phillies clearly got the better end of this deal. Mead didn’t debut until 2023 and played sparingly for Tampa Bay, batting a .235/.297/.312 average with 0.1 WAR and more strikeouts (44) than hits (40) in 50 games over parts of two seasons. Although he’s still early in his career, he already looks like a bust.

Meanwhile, Sanchez has blossomed into a potential All-Star and one of the best pitchers in the National League. The 27-year-old lefty has steadily improved over the past few seasons, emerging as a reliable workhorse in Philadelphia’s rotation. He recently tossed his first career shutout, improving to 6-3 with a career-best 2.41 ERA this season. He’s been worth 2.1 WAR this year and 3.9 for his career.

Less than three weeks into Dombrowski’s tenure with the Phillies, he engineered a three-team trade with the Rays and the Los Angeles Dodgers at the end of 2020. Tampa Bay sent Jose Alvarado to Philadelphia, selling low on the lefty reliever following his disappointing 2020 campaign (career-worst 6.00 ERA and 5.86 FIP in nine appearances).

Alvarado promptly rebounded with the Phillies and has been a mainstay in their bullpen for the last three and a half seasons, logging 29 saves and a 3.16 ERA in 182 innings. He’s been worth 2.8 WAR for Philadelphia — twice what he was worth for his old team — while the player the Rays received from the Dodgers (Dillon Paulson) has yet to appear in a major league game.

Lastly, there’s Michael Mercado, who won his first career start for the Phillies on Tuesday. The 25-year-old rookie pitched five strong innings in a 6-4 victory against the Chicago Cubs, yielding just one run on two hits with four strikeouts while filling in for the injured Spencer Turnbull.

Mercado also came from Tampa Bay, who traded him to Philadelphia for Adam Leverett and cash last winter. Leverett, a 25-year-old pitching prospect, is still in the minors.

Dombrowski has repeatedly fleeced the Rays over the years, also landing Nate Eovaldi from them in 2018 to help the Red Sox win the World Series. If Tampa Bay’s front office hasn’t learned by now, it should probably stop doing business with Dombrowski ASAP, especially with the MLB Trade Deadline just around the corner.