The fun part of the baseball offseason is the illusion of control. <\/p>\n
Unless you are Dave Dombrowski<\/a>. <\/p>\n In which case, you\u2019re a sitting duck. Or, even worse, you\u2019re a floating duck, whose legs are tied, except they are tied beneath the surface, and so everybody thinks you\u2019re a dumb little ducky because you don\u2019t know how to swim. <\/p>\n The Phillies<\/a> president has earned some of the criticism being lobbed his way. As ridiculous as it may seem for the Mets to pay Bo Bichette $42 million in annual average value, is it any more ridiculous than paying Taijuan Walker and Nick Castellanos<\/a> a combined $38 million in AAV? <\/p>\n \u00bb READ MORE: \u2018Phillies Extra\u2019 Q&A: Rob Thomson on managing the Bo Bichette aftermath, Nick Castellanos, and more<\/a><\/p>\n The substitution costs are always what get you. Thirty-eight million dollars would have been enough to have Jeff Hoffman and Carlos Est\u00e9vez in your bullpen last season. It would have been enough to have Edwin D\u00edaz in your bullpen this season. General managing is all about the tradeoffs you make. <\/p>\n The irony is that the Castellanos and Walker contracts are easy ones to stumble into for the same reason that everyone thinks Dombrowski has done a lousy job this offseason. If you happened to be someone who pointed out the overinflated and potentially ill-advised nature of those deals at the time they were signed, you were met with a shrug of the shoulders. <\/p>\n Who cares? It\u2019s not our money. <\/p>\n Well, it\u2019s nobody\u2019s money now. <\/p>\n But let\u2019s get back to our original point. Whatever nickel-and-diming we do in hindsight, it wouldn\u2019t erase the only conclusion we can draw from this offseason. No amount of fiscal prudence would have given the Phillies the means to catch up to, let alone keep pace with, the Dodgers. Over the last three offseasons, they have signed Shohei Ohtani, Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and now Kyle Tucker and D\u00edaz to contracts ranging from $22 million to $57 million in average annual value. <\/p>\n John Middleton<\/a> might be a billionaire, but the Dodgers\u2019 annual payroll is pushing half a billion once you factor in the luxury tax. How many billions? That\u2019s the question you need to answer to compete at this level of spending. <\/p>\n \u00bb READ MORE: Opinion: \u2018Not elite\u2019 Bryce Harper might lose his No. 3 spot in the Phillies lineup, flip with Kyle Schwarber at No. 2<\/a><\/p>\n The Phillies know this. Could Middleton and his minority owners rub their pennies together a little harder? Sure. Their attempt to sign Bichette was a sign that they aren\u2019t operating by any hard spending limits. What they lack \u2014 what everybody lacks, except for the Dodgers and Mets \u2014 is the ability to sign such contracts with the knowledge that they can outspend any mistakes. The Dodgers have plenty of seemingly dead money on their books after last year\u2019s bullpen spending spree. But it doesn\u2019t seem to matter. <\/p>\n The ability to sign Bichette for what would have been a reasonable seven-year, $200 million deal is a lot different from the ability to spend that money on whoever happens to be available. That\u2019s how you end up hamstringing yourself by overpaying for players like Walker and Castellanos. <\/p>\n Those contracts only make sense if you can outspend the mistakes. The Phillies aren\u2019t there, nor have they ever pretended to be. It\u2019s plenty fair to criticize Dombrowski and Middleton for offering those deals to begin with. But you can\u2019t fault them for their inability and\/or unwillingness to offer another batch of them. <\/p>\n