The theme of Wednesday’s shows was the appointing of blame for the Phillies’ disappointing start to a season that had sky-high excpectations, and Joe Giglio is putting the bulk of the blame of Dave Dombrowski’s doorstep.
“It’s not mediocre. It’s well below average for a team that had playoff and World Series aspirations,” Joe said. “I’m putting this on Dave Dombrowski. He built a team that was supposed to be better. He went out and spent a lot of money on Trea Turner, and he’s been bad. He hasn’t shown up at all in a Phillies uniform.
“There’s a lack of urgency with the Phillies that is alarming. It feels like they just think ‘Hey, we flipped the switch last season, we’ll do it again.’ There is no guarantee you can just sleepwalk through the first two months of the season and say ‘OK, now we’re gonna be good.’ It doesn’t work that way. There’s no urgency with this team. It’s bizarre.”
The Phillies showed urgency in the offseason by making big signings after their World Series run in 2022, but so far, those moves haven’t worked out, and fair or not, the blame for that goes to who made those moves.
“Being a GM, it’s really black and white,” Joe said. “If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. Dave Dombrowski had great ideas, but they have not work. He did not make the team better than it was a year ago.”
Hugh Douglas took a different route, and says it’s on the players who were paid to lead the team, and that hasn’t happened yet in 2023.
“It was about the guys you paid a lot of money to,” Hugh said. “And they came up short.”