Countdown to Clearwater: Phillies spring training storylines to monitor originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia
February has arrived and this is the final full week for nearly eight months without some form of Phillies baseball.
Pitchers and catchers report to Clearwater for spring training next Wednesday, Feb. 12, with the first full-squad workout the following Monday, Feb. 17. Many of the Phillies’ position players have already been hard at work in Florida this offseason.
There won’t be many camp battles but there will be a few, and in the days leading up to spring training we will take a look at some of the top storylines surrounding the 2025 Phillies:
Last chance with this group
The Phillies’ window doesn’t slam shut for good if they can’t win a World Series in 2025 but this team, after returning most of the same cast of characters the last three seasons, won’t look so similar moving into the future. Kyle Schwarber is a free agent after the season. So is J.T. Realmuto. And Ranger Suarez. And the Phillies’ top two offseason signings, Max Kepler and Jordan Romano.
An effort to retain some of them will be made, but finances will play a role and those are all distant thoughts anyway. For now, the Phillies are trying to put together one more run with this veteran core after falling two wins shy of a championship in 2023, five wins short in 2024 and fizzling out in the NLDS in 2025.
“I don’t feel like our window is closing,” Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said as the offseason began. “I keep hearing that. But what I think happens is that sometimes it closes with the current players that you have, but it doesn’t mean that it closes overall. We have young players coming that we really like. And we also have ownership that’s very kind to us with our expenditures on payroll.
“You’re in a position where some players age and as they get older, some of their skills diminish at times, that’s just a fact. And some at different paces. But what you need to be doing is having young players coming in the meantime. And we think that we have some really good young players coming within the system.”
A look at youngsters in camp
Top pitching prospect Andrew Painter will not participate in Grapefruit League games but will go through a throwing program in spring training, build up gradually, and if all goes well, eventually join the Phillies close to midseason. They will be protective of his arm and innings count but Painter has a chance to help this pitching staff in the second half by adding another high-velocity arm the league doesn’t yet have a book on.
Painter turns 22 in April. Outfielder Justin Crawford just turned 21. Shortstop Aidan Miller is 20. They’re the Phillies’ top three prospects, with Painter ranked 8th, Miller 27th and Crawford 64th on MLB.com’s Top 100. All three will be in spring training, Miller and Crawford for the first time.
The Phillies will also have pitching prospects Mick Abel, Moises Chace and Jean Cabrera — added to the 40-man roster before December’s Rule 5 draft — in camp. All three figure to begin the season starting games in the upper minors.
This could be a make-or-break year for the 23-year-old Abel, who walked 78 batters in 108⅔ innings last season at Triple A. Chace came over from Baltimore in the July Gregory Soto trade and pitched very well in Double A as a starter, striking out 35 in 19⅔ innings. Cabrera posted a 3.80 ERA with 110 strikeouts in 106⅔ inning in High A and Double A.
Lineup construction
Rob Thomson hinted after the season ended, at the winter meetings and again last week on The Phillies Show podcast that Schwarber may not occupy the leadoff spot everyday.
It’s not because of a lack of success, it’s because he is so important in a run-producing role. That is not a new or original thought but now it could be a way to push an offense forward that looks mostly the same.
Schwarber has 131 home runs as a Phillie in the regular season and 86 have been solo shots. All 12 of his playoff homers as a Phillie have been solos. That’s 98 of 143, or just under 70%, while the leaguewide rate of home runs that account for only one run is about 57%.
Obviously, there is a far greater chance of Schwarber coming up with a man on base if he’s hitting after Trea Turner and/or Bryce Harper than if he’s directly following the bottom of the order.
Turner is the leading candidate to lead off if Schwarber doesn’t. Bryson Stott has at times displayed the skill set to do it, but breaking up all the left-handedness would require pushing Harper and Schwarber a spot lower in the order than the Phillies would like. Thomson will experiment in spring training.
Bounce-back candidates
Spring training results won’t tell us much but the Phillies will be counting on bounce-back performances in the regular season from:
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Stott, whose OPS fell by 76 points and batting average from .280 to .245 while battling a sore elbow.
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Brandon Marsh, who went from .277 with an .829 OPS in 2023 to .249 with a .747 OPS and a rising strikeout rate in 2024.
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Turner, who has been good but not great since signing an 11-year, $300 million contract with the Phillies. Turner hit .311/.361/.509 from 2019-22. He’s hit .279/.328/.463 with the Phils.
Think about how much better this offense could be if Turner plays like himself for a full season and if even one of Stott or Marsh returns to his 2023 level. They aren’t the only three that need to step it up this season but they’re among the most important.
How many platoons?
Ideally, the Phillies do not want to run platoons in all of center field, left field and second base. But that will be determined by how well the lefties hit same-handed pitching.
The Phils want to give Kepler the opportunity to play every day in left field. If they do, those lineups are unlikely to also include Marsh. They still feel Stott is an everyday player, even if Edmundo Sosa wrestled playing time away from him last season.
They’d love for all three lefties to seize their position by handling southpaws, but if they don’t, there could be plenty of lineups featuring two or three of Johan Rojas, Weston Wilson and Sosa. Thomson cares about keeping his bench guys in rhythm so this wouldn’t be the worst thing, but it’s tough to keep everyone locked in at the plate when they’re in and out of the lineup.
As spring training approaches we will further explore those topics on a daily basis, along with the Phillies’ potential league-best rotation, reconfigured bullpen, the composition of the NL East and more.
