Corey Seidman caught up with Phillies GM Preston Mattingly to get his take on the MLB winter meetings, the Phillies losing Eiberson Castellno in the Rule 5 Draft, and his plans for the organization’s top prospects.
DALLAS — The Phillies made a strong run at ascending left-hander Garrett Crochet at the 2024 trade deadline but couldn't complete a deal with the White Sox, and on Wednesday Crochet was finally moved, going to Boston for four of the Red Sox top prospects.
Given the cost, it's not surprising that the Phillies didn't find common ground with the White Sox this week. Crochet now comes with one fewer year of control which should have reduced the cost, but the trade market for him was more plentiful than it was in July, intensifying the competition.
The Phillies don't want to trade their top two prospects, shortstop Aidan Miller and right-hander Andrew Painter. Not for a player with just two years of control like Crochet, and probably not for a player who fits better but has just one year of control remaining like Kyle Tucker. The Astros outfielder has drawn significant trade interest this winter for obvious reasons — when healthy, he's one of the top 10 position players in the game.
"Well, you always weigh those things. I've been there before, done it before," Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said Wednesday afternoon of the Crochet trade.
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"Not sure it was the right time for us to do that right now and I think there's a few reasons behind that. One is that (the White Sox) got a nice group of players, from what I read. We have four quality starting pitchers and a young pitcher coming right behind him that we really like a whole bundle.
"To give up that type of talent ... we really rode out the development of our farm system over the last few years and we're just getting to the point of having the impact of those guys. It's not quite here but we're on the verge of having some really good young, homegrown players.
"And there's two years of service. You could sign the player long-term but there's only two years. I've done that before so I'm not knocking it, I just don't think it's the right time for us to do that."
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The Phillies are more interested in graduating Painter and Miller to the majors and having them help for six, eight, 10 years or more. That's how you build a long-term winner, by injecting young talent onto an already established and successful roster.
"Our number one priority is always to win but I can't tell you that it's always to win at any cost because you've got other guys you really do like," Dombrowski said. "For example, Andrew Painter's pretty good. We could get a lot of players for Andrew Painter but I think I'll wait it out the next few months to get him with us. It's something you weigh every single time something comes up."
The Phillies had a couple of different conversations with teams and players that got "quite heavy" on Tuesday but no deal was finalized. It's not as if they faced a deadline, and many of the conversations from this week will continue into the holidays and new year.
"I wish we would've maybe done a little more but it's not done either," Dombrowski said. "One of the things that you have to be careful of, we talked about it yesterday — we had a couple of different conversations going that were quite heavy that didn't happen and then all of the sudden it's what about this, what about this? And it's like hold on, let's take a step back, we don't have to force anything, let's just wait and see what happens. Some of them are free agents and you can see if you're swimming in the free-agent waters right now, you're swimming in deep waters. With what we've been looking at, we haven't wanted to do what's out there.
"I don't want to force it. I don't think that's smart, we have too good a team and too many good players."
Phillies lose a pitcher
The Phillies lost right-handed pitcher Eiberson Castellano to the Minnesota Twins in Wednesday's Rule 5 draft. Castellano, 23, was the organization's Paul Owens Award winner in 2024, given annually to the most productive position player and pitcher in the Phillies' farm system that year.
Castellano went 6-5 with a 3.99 ERA last season, striking out 136 with just 29 walks in 103⅔ innings at High-A and Double A.
The Phils added three pitchers to their 40-man roster last month in Mick Abel, Moises Chace and Jean Cabrera but left Castellano unprotected and knew there was a risk they'd lose him.
The Twins must keep Castellano on their active major-league roster or injured list all season. Per Rule 5 stipulations, if they don't, he will be placed on waivers, and if he goes unclaimed through the waiver wire, he'd be offered back to the Phillies for $50,000.
"We like him, thought we might lose him, weren't sure if we would," Dombrowski said. "It really came down to roster spots are still valuable and we thought that overall, we think somebody might have a hard time keeping him."
The Phillies made a selection, drafting right-handed pitcher Mike Vasil away from the Mets but trading him to the Rays for cash considerations.
