Philadelphia Phillies: Team could wait till offseason to re-sign JT Realmuto
By David Esser
The Philadelphia Phillies are playing the long game with JT Realmuto.
“Sign him!”
Those were the exact words that came out of Bryce Harper’s mouth following a JT Realmuto home run earlier this week. While the clip of Harper voicing his support for his teammate went viral on Twitter due to an overwhelming amount of support from the Philly fanbase, a genuine question arose. Why have the Philadelphia Phillies not given the “best catcher in baseball” a much deserved contract extension?
Acquired in a pre-season trade with the Miami Marlins, Realmuto has massively exceeded expectations. Not only was he the Phillies lone All-Star in 2019, but he was quite positively the best catcher in all of baseball. He slashed .275/.328/.493 while driving in 83 runs, good enough for his second consecutive “Silver Slugger” award. Realmuto also threw out 43 would be base stealers at a rate of 47%, which landed him his first “Gold Glove”.
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Realmuto was dynamic both at the plate and behind the plate, and the Phillies paid a hefty price to acquire him (traded away their best pitching prospect in Sixto Sanchez). So what could possibly be the hold up?
According to Todd Zolecki of MLB.com, talks between the Phillies and their catcher have all but stopped as of late. This is leading people to believe Matt Klentak plans to let Realmuto hit free agency this year to “set the market”, in hopes that he can re-sign Realmuto for a bit cheaper. While this makes sense from a money standpoint, the potential disaster that awaits should a team outbid the Phillies in free agency would be disastrous.
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Realmuto is the team’s best two-way player since Jimmy Rollins, and losing him in free agency would cause a full on revolt amongst Phillies fans. Despite everyone in the city begging the front office to lock him up yesterday, it looks like the team is prepared to play the long game with their All-Star catcher.