Philadelphia Phillies: Building a Christmas list for the rest of free agency

Sign a real closer.

Hector Neris was better in 2020 than his base numbers might initially suggest, but the Philadelphia Phillies need to be honest about what his role should be moving forward. He’s not a closer, and he’d likely put up better numbers operating in a set-up role. The Phils had the second-worst bullpen in baseball history last year, so a complete revamp of the pen’ as a whole is obviously a need.

Fixing the closer position would be a decent start.

As I’m writing this, there’s still a pretty large pool of closers available to be signed. Guys like Brad Hand, Liam Hendricks, Kirby Yates, Alex Colome, and Trevor Rosenthal are all free agents – and every single one of them would instantly improve the Phillies ninth inning job.

Now these guys won’t be coming in for cheap, but at some point the Phillies have to start committing actual resources to the bullpen if they want to fix it. They tried the “bargain bin” strategy in 2019 and 2020, and it just didn’t work.

Bringing in a lockdown closer on a 1-2 year deal would provide a huge sense of stability to the ‘pen, and would give Joe Girardi greater flexibility when it comes to managing close ballgames.