Philadelphia Phillies Coach Gets Fired For……read more

Dave Dombrowski doesn’t have a perfect track record as a baseball executive, but he knows a shrewd move when he sees it, and he has made a career out of it.

Case in point: On July 30, 2022, the Philadelphia Phillies acquired utility infielder Edmundo Sosa from the St. Louis Cardinals in exchange for young left-handed reliever JoJo Romero. It wasn’t an easy move to make, considering what the Phils had invested in Romero since selecting him in the fourth round of the 2016 Draft and then developing him for several years.

The Cardinals had valued Sosa for years, but they sacrificed what he brought to the table in order to roll the dice on a potential bullpen upgrade. And, to their credit, Romero has worked out fairly well. He was decent in 15 games for them to finish 2022, split time between MLB and Triple-A in 2023, and has now firmly established himself as a big league option in 2024 through the first two months of this campaign.

But he’s simply not having the kind of impact on games that Sosa has been having for the Phillies.

After hitting 30 home runs in 2019, DeJong seemed firmly entrenched as the Cardinals’ everyday shortstop for years to come. But his numbers dipped in 2020, his average cratered to .197 in 2021, and he endured an awful start to 2022 before being demoted for two months.