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Trea Turner will open the season at shortstop. Don Mattingly is returning as manager. Alec Bohm could be back at third base, Luis Arraez could also return. The majority of a bullpen nobody liked is set to return, no starting pitchers are getting dealt to help in other areas, and it sounds like Brandon Marsh isn’t going anywhere, either.

All these nuggets from Dave Dombrowski’s press conference on Thursday may have you feeling perplexed, bewildered, confused and perhaps a bit frustrated.

To be fair to Dombrowski and Mattingly, they were never going to come out and say, “Get ready for an off-season of big changes.” You never make promises you don’t know if you can keep, and with the lockout looming and so much roster inflexibility, the level of change desired by most may not be realistic. We’ve been saddled with an underachieving roster that appears headed in the wrong direction, and we want to know that the 70-year-old team president is seeing what we’re seeing.

Based on his statements Thursday, it seems clearer to Dombrowski there are more issues to deal with than in past seasons, but he’s not exactly matching our energy. Which, to be honest, is probably a good thing. Were he to signal that players under contract for 2027 weren’t in the team’s plans for next year, he’d have a hard time getting any kind of trade value for them.

But it does feel like the future Hall of Fame executive is not keeping up. Organizations like the Tampa Bay Rays, Cleveland Guardians and the NL champion Milwaukee Brewers, are doing laps around the Phils. It’s telling that, after their fifth straight postseason appearance, the team fired their longtime hitting coach Kevin Long, and their infield coach Bobby Dickerson, because they couldn’t get this team of stubborn veterans to play better. The roster, coaching staff, farm system, heck the entire organization, feels stuck in neutral compared to these small-market, low-budget teams that feature an array of good, young, athletic talent with homegrown superstars at the big league level and more on the way.

The Phillies’ farm system is not producing quality baseball players in the numbers it should, and they’re still trying to figure out why.

Meanwhile, the Brewers have quietly been one of baseball’s best teams for the last decade. Since 2018, Milwaukee has missed the postseason just once in nine seasons, when the 2022 Brewers finished in 2nd place with an 86-76 record and just barely missed out on the third wild card that the Phillies used to sneak into the tournament.

Finally, on their 8th try in 9 seasons, they’ve reached the World Series. They lost a heartbreaker of a seven-game series in the ‘18 NLCS to the Dodgers, lost in the wild card round four times, fell in the NLDS in ‘21, and were swept by the very same Dodgers they dispatched in four games last night.

It was very cool to see the Brewers avenge their sweep at the hands of Los Angeles last season, taking out the team that swept them a season ago as they sought their third straight title. It happened because the players displayed a resiliency that the Philadelphia nine has been lacking in recent seasons.

The Brewers moved past their failures. The Phillies are still struggling to do so.

In 2023, the Phils looked well on their way to following up their magical run to the World Series the season before after blitzing the Diamondbacks 10-0 in Game 2. We all know what happened next. Arizona adjusted their approach to the Phillies’ lineup, they didn’t adjust back, and they choked away Games 6 and 7 in the NLCS.

The Phillies are 4-12 in 16 playoff games since that fateful Game 3 in Arizona. Last year’s roster was probably the best of the bunch. The 2025 Phillies were a team playing extremely well heading into October, with no real weaknesses anywhere. Their four-game loss was excruciatingly close, and I believe if they’d advanced past the Dodgers, they would have won it all.

But they didn’t, and the specter of all those failures has haunted every player since. It was one of the reasons most fans wanted to see big changes this off-season. Sure, there were questions about the physical abilities of the aging roster but, just as importantly, something needed to be done to snap the collective psychosis of a group that routinely tightened up and succumbed to expectations every year.

The Brewers, meanwhile, have been making big changes to their roster every year. Much of that is due to a limited payroll, so it has been forced upon them in a way it has not Dombrowski and the Phils. It would be understandable if, after seven straight failures, they felt as if there was a steel ceiling above them that they would never break through.

Entering the 2026 playoffs, the Brewers postseason record since ‘23 was 4-10. But with new players on the roster every year, a culture of failure was never really able to set in.

Compare the 2023 Milwaukee squad to the one that is currently rampaging through the league right now.

2023 Brewers:

C – William Contreras
1B – Rowdy Tellez
2B – Brice Turang
SS – Willy Adames
3B – Brian Anderson
LF – Christian Yelich
CF – Joey Wiemer
RF – Tyrone Taylor, Sal Frelick, Mark Canha
DH – Jesse Winker

SP – Corbin Burnes, Freddy Peralta, Brandon Woodruff, Colin Rea, Wade Miley, Adrian Houser
RP – Devin Williams, Bryse Wilson, Joel Payamps, Hoby Miler, Elvis Peguero

2026 Brewers:

C – William Contreras
1B – Jake Bauers, Andrew Vaughn
2B – Brice Turang
SS – Cooper Pratt (21), Joey Ortiz
3B – David Hamilton
LF – Jackson Chourio
CF – Garrett Mitchell
RF – Sal Frelick, Luis Lara
DH – Christian Yelich

SP – Jacob Misiorowski, Shane Drohan, Kyle Harrison, Robert Gasser, Logan Henderson, Brandon Sproat
RP – Trevor Megill, Chad Patrick, Aaron Ashby, Abner Uribe, Grant Anderson

William Contreras, Brice Turang, and Christian Yelich are the mainstays. Sure, throw Sal Frelick into the mix if you want, too. The entire pitching staff is different, as is the majority of the position player grouping.

This is just in a span of four seasons. The Phillies, meanwhile, have featured much of the same roster during that stretch.

I can’t say for sure that player turnover has helped Milwaukee move past their postseason failures, but it helps to shake up the echo chamber. It’s also much easier to do when no one is signed for more than three seasons at a time. The Phils’ collection of longer contracts limits their flexibility, especially with their highest-priced players also possessing the ability to block trades.

It also helps to have great young players emerge to push the team forward.

The Phillies received an acceptable contribution from center fielder Justin Crawford, a better return (especially at the end) from Andrew Painter, and a surprising one from reliever Alex McFarlane. But that was it. The rest of the roster was returning veterans or castoffs from other organizations brought in on one-year deals. The younger vets that were here — Bryson Stott, Brandon Marsh and Alec Bohm — never materialized into being dependable, consistent players.

Milwaukee, however, saw their home grown stars provide them with elite production this year. Turang led the team in WAR (7.3), while Chourio (4.9) and former first round pick Garrett Mitchell (3.4) were right behind him 2nd and 3rd among position players. Jacob Misiorowski (6.5 WAR) just might be a unanimous selection for NL Cy Young Award this season. These were all positive additions from the farm system, and they added pieces through some smart deals, like Contreras coming from Atlanta as part of a three-team deal and signing Jake Bauers to a one-year, $2.7 million deal this off-season.

Milwaukee also made some dangerous decisions on elite arms that only came as a result of their payroll limitations.

They traded Corbin Burnes at the start of the 2024 season, the final year of his contract. They sent Freddy Peralta to the Mets prior to this season. They dealt their elite closer Devin Williams to the Yankees ahead of the 2025 season and sent All Star closer Josh Hader to the Padres in August of 2022. If the Brewers had the kind of payroll flexibility the Phillies do, perhaps some of those deals don’t happen. They did that once before with former MVP Christian Yelich, who inked a nine-year, $215 million deal before 2020. Six years later, they’re nearing the end of that contract and are struggling to get to the finish line.

Of course, Milwaukee is at the forefront on all of the analytics and data that is available. Eno Sarris of The Athletic outlined all the different ways the Brewers are working to get an edge in these areas. Meanwhile, the Phillies still can’t figure out how to align hitting information coming from their data analysts to the coaches up and down the organization. Long was fired this week in large part because there was a disconnect in the wiring somewhere. The Phillies hope to hire a new hitting coach that will be able to teach and implement this information to hitters at the big league level.

The Brewers are 10 years ahead of the Phils in this department. Perhaps that’s why they had 8 players with at least 250 plate appearances generate an OPS+ over 100. The Phillies had 2.

At his end-of-season news conference on Thursday, it sounded like Dave Dombrowski was a bit more aware of the state of the team’s roster, but didn’t display any real sense of alarm or urgency. He’s right when he says their starting rotation remains a strength and will provide the team with a high floor. He hopes to get the same kind of boost from Aidan Miller and Bryan Rincon that Milwaukee is getting from their home-grown talent.

We remain hopeful he’ll reach into a bag of tricks and find creative solutions to fixing a bad lineup and a bullpen that needs more trustworthy arms. And he’ll have to do it all while working around a work stoppage.

Make no mistake, the Phillies can’t become the Brewers, or the Rays, or any other franchise like them in just one off-season. But they can start by, in private at least, recognizing the severity of the situation.

We’ll see what happens in the World Series, but another opportunity for a historic comeback has come and gone. The 2004 Boston Red Sox remain the only team ever to overcome an 0-3 series deficit in a best-of-seven series in the history of baseball. 

That’s hopefully a trend that goes on forever, leaving the legendary 2004 team on a pedestal of its own. Now with that said, it’s starting to get really annoying to see the media attempt to connect a modern-day team to the ‘04 Sox every single time a club goes down three games to none in a series. Sure, it’s a nice 2004 PR bump – not that the team needs it – but doing the “but dude, remember ‘04?’ for all of these teams is getting ridiculous. 

While many of these occurrences have sparked a quick chuckle and move on, the bit really gets old fast. 

Examples? 

David Ortiz’s razzing (one of many) of Derek Jeter during the 2023 ALCS. Aaron Boone showing the 2022 Yankees highlights of ESPN’s Four Days in October to fire up his squad (because showing an all-time low point of franchise history should do the trick!). The list goes on and on.

So honestly, credit to Dave Roberts – the man who ignited that magical October to begin with – for not inserting Red Sox propaganda into the 2026 NLCS, where it had no business being. Los Angeles got swept by the Milwaukee Brewers to end their bid for a three-peat and keep Boston’s long-standing legacy alive. 

The funny thing with so many of these examples is that whenever the teams or media point to 2004 to draw up a narrative, the incoming sweep (or gentleman’s sweep) feels inevitable and often plays out that way. That’s all the more reason to let the 2004 team live on their own and stop forcing the Sox into headlines where they don’t belong.

Only one other team has even forced a Game 7 after falling down 0-3. That would be the 2020 Houston Astros in the COVID season, who won three in a row before the Tampa Bay Rays finally woke up to win Game 7 and keep the Red Sox exclusive in their club. THAT was a fine time to make 2004 connections given how close Houston actually came to joining the party. 

Until a team is on the doorstep for real, please stop injecting 2004 talk into every single October. What the 2004 Red Sox did was amazing. Hardly any other team has even come close. It’s more than enough.

The Atlanta Braves have been making some small and quiet moves with their roster since their elimination in the NLDS and here’s another one. After they selected Danny Young’s contract last week, the Braves have decided to do the same with Brett Wisely as well. DaShawn Keirsey Jr. ended up getting outrighted to Triple-A Gwinnett as a corresponding move so they made a decision on him at some point without publicizing it. All of this was found on the Braves’ transaction page and was reported initially by Harrison Smajovits of Atlanta Braves on SI.

More #Braves activity

– Brett Wisely was selected to the MLB roster
– DaShawn Keirsey Jr. was outrighted to Triple-A
– Luke Williams elected free agency after being outrighted to Triple-A

— Harrison Smajovits (@HarrisonSmaj) October 15, 2026

Wisely didn’t make any appearances with the Braves at the big league level in 2026 as he ended up playing 125 games for the Gwinnett Stripers this season. He had himself a pretty solid year at the plate, as he hit .281/.399/.436 with 11 home runs and 127 wRC+ at the Triple-A level last season. That’s to say that I’d imagine that the Braves aren’t bringing him up at this point in the offseason because they figure that he’s part of their big league plans for 2027.

Wisely has never really been able to translate his Triple-A success to big league success, so I’m guessing that the Braves figure that this is a good way to make sure that they’ll keep their options open with him being used in another transaction down the road, since putting the veteran on the 40-man roster means that he won’t be able to use his rights as a minor league vet to elect free agency. Wisely’s last stint with the big league Braves lasted all of 4 games and nine plate appearances in 2025, in case you’re wondering whether or not there’s really something here.

Either way, it’s a totally procedural move that gives the Braves a chance to do something with Wisely from a transactional standpoint going forward during the offseason without potentially losing him for completely nothing. We’ll see how it goes, though.

Shohei Ohtani’s plans are unchanged.

Despite his injury crisis this year, and the limitations it left him with in the playoffs, the two-way star still wants to be a two-way player again next season.

“Yes, definitely,” Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton on Thursday night, when asked if he intended to return to pitching in 2027. “And [I’m] looking forward to having a better season next year.”

The Dodgers would shudder at the idea of another Ohtani campaign going worse than this one.

In his attempt to return to a full-time two-way role for the first time since 2023, the four-time MVP ended up getting hurt, being shut down as a pitcher after only 85 innings, and slumping mightily at the plate for much of the playoffs while trying to manage his far-less-than-100% health.

His October limitations proved costly to the Dodgers.

His inability to withstand the physical toll of his one-of-a-kind role was one of the key reasons they were knocked out in the National League Championship Series.

On Thursday night, he indicated it’s possible he might need to have offseason surgery, as well; though he did not specify if it would be for his inflamed left knee, ailing right arm, some other unknown issue, or potentially all of the above.

“Hard to tell at this point,” Ohtani said. “It’s something that’s going to be analyzed, discussed over the offseason, and see if that’s a viable thing to do.”

And yet, the 32-year-old didn’t waver in his desire to continue to both hit and pitch moving forward.

He didn’t seem daunted by the disastrous way this season played out.

“I haven’t been able to really come to grip in terms of what I’ve learned overall this season,” he said. “It’s something that I’m going to kind of go back to the drawing board in terms of treatment, training program, and see what I can come up with for next season.”

The question, of course, is not whether Ohtani can still be dominant in his two dueling roles. This year, he still batted .275 with 30 home runs and 81 RBIs as a hitter, while going 8-2 with a 1.79 ERA in 14 pitching starts.

The problem was, after his knee started barking in June, and his arm became increasingly bothersome from July onward, he wasn’t able to make much of an impact on the mound or in the batter’s box.

His final pitching start came on July 3, with repeated attempts to build back up scuttled by physical setbacks.

His form at the plate dipped drastically over the final two months of the regular season, requiring an injured list stint in September that did little to get him back to himself.

In the playoffs, Ohtani hit just .192. Before his three-run homer in Game 4 of the NLCS, he didn’t have an extra-base hit or an RBI.

Because of all that, there was speculation the Dodgers might try to manage him differently next year –– and, if not ask him to give up on pitching, try to moderate his workload in a way that won’t be so taxing on his body.

If anything, however, Ohtani on Thursday night seemed to bemoan the fact he didn’t pitch more this year, noting how he wasn’t available for the postseason rotation.

“Not quite satisfied with how things shaped up on the pitching side,” he said.

What all that means for 2027 remains unclear –– especially with the threat of a looming lockout and potential offseason recovery process.

The only thing Ohtani knows for sure: He still wants to continue in his two-way role.

The Milwaukee Brewers are the 2026 National League champions. That’s objectively a neat and fun thing for sports fans. The Brewers only went to the playoffs twice in their first 39 years of existence, and while they have been a playoff staple since 2018, they’ve never made it to the Fall Classic. They’ve never won the World Series, either. They will get a chance to do so soon.

But make no mistake—they’ve earned it. The Brewers won 103 regular season games and swept their NLCS opponents, the Los Angeles Dodgers, who were the only other team in baseball to notch 100 victories.

That last part is particularly important. In the last few years, the Dodgers have overtaken the New York Yankees as Major League Baseball’s #1 bad guys. Prior to this season, they had been to five of the previous nine World Series and had come away with three wins, including back-to-back wins in 2024 and 2025. They’ve done so by drafting and developing well, sure, but also by brazenly outspending everybody and becoming the top destination for top-tier Japanese talent. Other teams literally can’t compete the same way.

Fans have noticed, and the grumblings have peaked at the same time as small market team ownership have grumbled. The owners, having sought a salary cap for years, have smelled blood in the water and have pushed hard for a salary cap as the previous collective bargaining agreement comes to a close.

One set of playoff games doesn’t mean everything, and both sides know this. But humans are influenced by the most recent events, and this year’s playoffs kicked off with some heavy hitters. The Dodgers ranked first overall with a $412 million payroll. The Yankees ranked third, with a $310 million payroll. Philadelphia, fourth, spent $290 million. Atlanta, sixth, spent $259 million. The Cubs, seventh, spent $254 million. The Astros, eighth, spent $240 million. The Padres, ninth, spent $219 million. The Red Sox, 11th, were at $203 million. In other words, only three of the top 11 highest MLB payrolls missed the playoffs.

There were a lot of potential matchups that could have heavily contributed to the argument for a salary cap. A Yankees-Dodgers rematch was possible. We could have gotten a Red Sox-Phillies series, or an Astros-Braves series. And yet, we got none of those things—we got the Brewers (19th in overall payroll at $142 million) spiking the Dodgers into oblivion on the National League side, with the Cleveland Guardians (29th, $87 million) and Tampa Bay Rays (28th, $90 million) duking it out in the American League. The Dodgers and New York Mets both spent more in payroll than those three teams combined.

In such a public industry, the CBA negotiations are a public relations battle. If any of the above scenarios had happened, the league could have simply shrugged and said, “Look at these big market teams crowding out the few small market teams. We need a salary cap to stop this from happening.” I think this would have been especially true if the Dodgers had put together a threepeat. None of the player arguments could have cut through those optics.

And yet, the one scenario that could have significantly defused momentum for a salary cap has played out: the Dodgers were sent home in embarrassing fashion, both the ALCS and NLCS featured small-market teams, and the World Series will be a small-market showdown.

This isn’t the perfect outcome for the players, because if, say, the $87 million payroll, 85-win Guardians come out victoriously then that isn’t exactly a great argument that owners should bother trying to spend to their capacity on player salaries. We could still get a salary cap, and it still might even be the right call. But no matter how the World Series ends, the players can point to it all winter and say that the league doesn’t need a salary cap for small market teams to succeed.

Pittsburgh Pirates second baseman Brandon Lowe was a massive boost for the team in his first season with the Bucs. After being acquired in a three-team trade with the Tampa Bay Rays and Houston Astros in the offseason, Lowe had arguably the best statistical season of his career in 2026.

Lowe had a batting average of .260, with 35 home runs and 96 runs batted in. He posted a career-high 5.4 wins above replacement in 150 games with the team. This makes him one of the top free agents on the open market, and the Pirates are going to have to pay up if they want to keep him.

“He’ll hit the open market as one of the most highly coveted position players available,” Aiden Stepansky of MLB.com wrote. “(Pirates general manager Ben) Cherington described the return of Lowe as a ‘great outcome if he’s a Pirate next year.’ But it will cost a pretty penny, likely a sizable increase from the $11.5 million he earned in 2026, and Lowe, at 32 years old, could find interest in a longer-term deal.”

The Pirates have the money to spend on Lowe, but given their spending habits over the last couple of years, it remains to be seen whether Pittsburgh would invest in him for a long period of time.

BD community, how do you feel about Lowe entering free agency this offseason? How much should the Pirates be willing to pay to keep him in Pittsburgh? Let us know in the comments section below.

As the Rockies try to claw their way back to winning, there has been lots of discussion about how the organization needs to follow the example of the Chicago White Sox, who went from 102 losses in 2025 to the playoffs this season. President of baseball operations Paul DePodesta and manager Warren Schaeffer have both talked about it.

Over the years, there have been many organizations that have provided a model that Colorado could try to emulate, including small-market teams like the Tampa Bay Rays and Milwaukee Brewers. Whether it’s how to thrive with a smaller payroll, how to use data, strategies and technology, or how to build a roster, there are many great ideas out there.

On Oct. 14, The Athletic’s Eno Saris provided more grist for the Colorado mill, going on a deep dive into the Rays and Brewers and laying out some interesting approaches both teams have taken to achieve success over the years to end up deep in the postseason in 2026. In his piece titled “Rays, Brewers always outperform expectations. These ‘Moneyball’-like edges are the key,” Sarris explores numerous factors in detail: types of technology used, data, pitch framing, catcher defense, creative pitching strategies, roster height, outfield route running, pitch design innovation and more.

Sarris’ analysis is loaded with ideas to look at throughout the offseason, especially considering the Rockies are led by the Moneyballer himself — president of baseball operations Paul DePodesta.

The Rockies are trying to implement, have yet to try, or aren’t succeeding at many of Sarris’ points; however, there are also some areas in which the Rockies are showing growth. Opting for a positive take in this first analysis — knowing there will also be lots of areas for improvement — I figured I’d start with one of Sarris’ points on the value of emphasizing contact and speed. 

Sarris starts this section out by saying,

Everything old is new again. As the league’s strikeout rate has climbed and teams have focused on power, the speedy slap hitter has largely gone out of style. Well, the Rays had the best strikeout rate in baseball this year, and were also second in steals, while the Brewers were fourth in steals and featured five or six important hitters with great contact rates, depending on how you count.

Let’s bring the numbers and the Rockies into that.

Team	2026 K% (Rank)	2025 K% (Rank)	2026 SB (Rank)	2025 SB (Rank)	2026 SB Success (Rank)	2025 SB Success (Rank)
Rays	18.8% (No. 1)	23.1% (No. 22)	164 (No. 2)	194 (No. 1)	75.8% (No. 18)	80.2% (No. 7)
Brewers	22% (No. 17)	20.3% (No. 5)	162 (No. 5)	164 (No. 2)	75.1% (No. 19)	75.6% (No. 23)
Rockies	22.8% (No. 21)	25.9% (No. 29)	109 (No. 13)	87 (No. 23)	72.7% (No. 25)	68.5% (No. 30)

The Rays are the best at not striking out. The Brewers? No so much. The Rockies? They’re getting better.

Colorado went from striking out 25.9% of the time in 2025, which was the second-worst in MLB, to striking out 22.8% of the time this season. The better plate discipline bumped the Rockies from No. 29 to No. 21, showing that they are on the right track. 

The Brewers rank No. 17 in strikeout rate, just four spots ahead of Colorado, but they also have significantly better pitching than the Rockies. Colorado has to bank on putting the ball in play more, having more runners and getting them to score by any means necessary to help combat the runs we know the pitching staff will surrender. 

That’s where base running came in.

The Rockies went from being atrocious at stealing bases in 2025 to a little above average in 2026. While the numbers aren’t high, Colorado did jump from No. 23 in stolen bases with 87 in 2025 to No. 13 with 109 in 2026. That’s largely due to Jake McCarthy’s 32 steals, which were the most by a single Rockie in a season since 2015 when Charlie Blackmon swiped 43 bags. While still far behind the Rays (164) and Brewers (162), that’s a big jump in one season.

Sarris explains a key stolen base success rate that each team should be aiming for:

The numbers say that every team should be stealing more. Depending on how many outs there are, the break-even point in terms of the value of that extra base put against the value of the out is around a 70-75 percent success rate. If you are successful less often, you’re costing your team too many outs for the value of getting to second. If you are successful more often than that, you’re leaving potential extra bases on the table and being too careful.

The Rockies were 72.7% effective when trying to steal bases in 2026, which is more than 4% better than in 2025. Both the Rays and Brewers are above 75%. Considering again that the Rockies need to score more than the average team to win games, they need another jump in their success rates in 2027 to keep trending in the right direction. They will also need to steal a lot more often to ever grow their totals to the likes of the Rays and Brewers, which stole 55 and 53 more bases, respectively, than the Rockies last season. 

The takeaways — at least in these two areas — are simple: Put the ball in play more and get caught stealing less, while trying to steal more. It’s easier said than done, but at least the Rockies are making progress.

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