The Phillies Will Sign This Free Agent Outfielder

The official Major League Baseball website lists 35 free agent outfielders looking for a contract this winter. The Phillies are likely to sign one of them to a deal.

“But which one, Foley?” asked nobody. Well, let’s investigate.

The Phils haven’t said much about their specific off-season targets. But they have dropped a few clues to help us figure out what they’re looking for:

• Despite some rumors to the contrary, the Phillies insist that they are not interested in dealing right fielder Nick Castellanos. Casty made 148 starts in RF last season and we can probably expect a similar role in 2024.
• The organization loves Johan Rojas’ glove in center field, but acknowledges that his bat isn’t yet major-league ready. Rojas hit .302 in 149 regular season ABs last year, but benefited from an unsustainable .410 batting average on balls in play. (The league average BABIP is typically around .300.) His luck ran out in the postseason, where he slashed .093/.114/.163 in 45 plate appearances. Theoretically, JoRo could claim an everyday job if he hits the cover off the ball in spring training. It’s more likely, however, that Rojas will start the 2024 season in the minor leagues to get as many at-bats as possible.
• During the MLB winter meetings, Rob Thomson indicated that he has confidence in Brandon Marsh’s ability to hit left-handed pitching. So until Rojas is ready, we can likely expect Marsh to handle center field most days (with right handed plus-defender Cristian Pache available as a backup center fielder or platoon partner).

Given all of the above, let’s lock Castellanos in at right field and some combination of Marsh and Pache (mostly Marsh) in at center. Though the Phillies value positional flexibility highly, they probably don’t need to pay a premium for yet another player defensively talented enough to play CF. Let’s narrow our original list of 35 defenders down to true corner-outfielder types.

Eliminating the free agents that the MLB website classifies as center fielders, we’re left with 23 candidates.

Because the roster is already a bit heavy on lefty hitters, and because there are still some lingering doubts about Marsh’s ability to hit lefty pitching, let’s further narrow our list to right-handed batters.

Getting rid of the lefties brings us to 11 candidates. (See you in hell, Joc Pederson.)

• Teoscar Hernandez (31 years old, 4.3 WAR in 2023)
• Lourdes Gurriel Jr. (30, 3.2 WAR )
• Hunter Renfroe (32, 3.1)
• Tommy Pham (36, 2.5)
• Jurickson Profar (31, 0.6)
• Jordan Luplow (30, 0.5)
• Randal Grichuk (32, 0.4)
• Wil Myers (33, 0.3)
• Robbie Grossman (34, 0.1)
• Kevin Pillar (35, 0.1)
• AJ Pollock (36, -0.4)

Phillies President of Baseball Operations Dave Dombrowski has indicated that the team is unlikely to make a huge splash in free agency. And it wouldn’t make much sense to sign any of these players to an expensive long-term deal, because the hope is that some combination of Marsh/Rojas/Pache and top prospect Justin Crawford will man LF and CF in 2025 and beyond.

Knowing the Phillies are unlikely to shop at the top of the market for a right-handed corner outfielder, let’s eliminate Hernandez (projected to sign for 3-5 years at $20mil+ per year) and Gurriel Jr. (projected to sign for about 3 years, $48mil).

At the same time, there’s no reason for a team with World Series aspirations to purchase a sub-1.0 WAR player. At a certain point, the team is better off playing an almost-everyday outfield of Marsh/Rojas/Castellanos with Pache and other internal options serving as backups. Let’s eliminate everyone with a 2023 WAR below 0.7 from the list.

That leaves us with just two players: Hunter Renfroe and Tommy Pham.

Renfroe has a .239 career batting average and a .300 career on-base percentage, and has struck out in 25.4% of his major league at-bats. He’s valuable because he hits 34 home runs per 162 games. But the Phillies have no shortage of sluggers.

Pham, meanwhile, has a career slash line of .259/.351/.435 with 21 home runs per 162 games. His profile is a much better fit in the Phillies’ existing lineup than Renfroe. And, for a Phils team expected to make the playoffs, Pham isn’t afraid of the bright lights: The 35-year-old journeyman has a career postseason slash line of .313/.333/.513 (.846 OPS) with six home runs in 120 plate appearances. He’s a serviceable option for significant playing time if necessary, but he’s not good enough to block the path of the Phillies’ young outfielders. And he’s expected to sign a one-year deal for $10 million or less.

Welcome to the Phillies, Tommy.