Why all the hubbub about Harrison Bader?

Harrison Bader will not be a member of the Philadelphia Phillies this coming season, having agreed to a deal with the Giants. Looking at it from the perspective of San Francisco, they can put Bader in their center field and pair him, somehow, with Jung Hoo Lee to have one of the better defensive pairings in the game. Knowing that even with altered dimensions in their ballpark they still have a massive gap in right center field that could use elite gloves patrolling it, they now have a real center fielder that can track balls hit into that gap with greater confidence it will be caught. They are banking on his 2025 offensive stat line to be a bit more sticky than his previous seven seasons of data, but there was also little available in the free agent market that would have been an upgrade in the same vein as Bader over what they were looking at.

So, from a Giants perspective, it’s a pretty good deal. Yet around the fanbase of the Phillies, there is consternation that the choice the team made in which right handed hitting outfielder they wish to employ has led to a resounding sense of negativity and frustration. Choosing Adolis Garcia over Bader has made large swaths of the fanbase red with rage, which is at least somewhat surprising.

Why?

First, let’s acknowledge something. In a vacuum, acquiring Bader at 2 years and $20.5 million is preferable to giving Garcia $10 million for one season. Had this deal been available to the Phillies to offer in November, it’s possible (and maybe likely based on Bader’s comments) that he would be in red pinstripes on Opening Day. The defense that Garcia can offer in right field, quite the improvement over what the Phillies had the past few seasons, is still nothing compared to having an elite center fielder. Both hitters are right handed and have a decent amount of swing and miss in their game, but 2025 saw Garcia take a few steps backwards at the plate while Bader had himself a career year. The “career year at a platform year” is something largely dispelled as myth, but it seems like Bader picked the right year to have his best.

And it still only got him two years.

So, even if we can say that yes, having Bader is preferable to having Garcia, the game isn’t played in a vacuum and there are several things to consider.

One of the biggest gripes is that signing Garcia early left the team unable to jump at chances like this one to bring back Bader and there is validity in that. It’s not the same thing, of course, but it reminds of the time that Ruben Amaro signed Jonathan Papelbon to be his team’s closer to a deal that included their having to give up their first round draft pick due to Papelbon’s being a Type A free agent, only to see the CBA change to eliminate those kinds of compensation. It was jumping the gun.

Was signing Garcia jumping the gun as well? It’s possible. Bringing in someone on a one-year deal is rarely a bad thing (unless it’s Jordan Romano) and Garcia still has the air of being a solid bounce back candidate. There are things to like about his profile that the team sees, most notably his being a massive defensive over Nick Castellanos. He strikes out a ton and chases too much, but going back even two years can show that there is still a good offensive player in there. Perhaps the change of scenery will help Garcia. After all, the Rangers were the team that decided that a podcast host was their best bet at upgrading their hitting coach to help fix their offensive woes in 2025, so maybe working with Kevin Long, an actual adult, can help unlock what’s been wrong with Garcia.

But getting Garcia and making sure they weren’t caught with their pants down as far as changing up the outfield doesn’t seem like a bad idea. Let’s say they had passed on Garcia and decided they would wait out Bader. They knew then that Bader wanted a three-year deal, perhaps the main reason they never really engaged with his camp in contract negotiations in the first place. It was reported that Bader was still looking for three years right up until agreeing to two with San Francisco. Whose to say that he would have chosen the Phillies in the first place? There is a commitment to have Justin Crawford playing center field that would have prevented Bader from taking the spot where is most effective. Had the team neglected to sign Garcia and lost out on Bader, then the outfield components would probably look worse than what many perceive them to be now.

The other part of this is Crawford.

As stated, the team looks plenty ready to have Crawford as their every day center fielder moving forward in 2026. Blocking Crawford from the spot at which he is best suited would be anathema to their stated plan for the season.

Now, you could say that moving Crawford over to left field would in his and the team’s best interest. After all, according to most reports, Crawford is a better defensive option in left field than in center. Fair, but that would move Brandon Marsh over to right, where the team would again need another platoon partner for him. As currently constructed, the team plans on having Otto Kemp play left field for them, a position he played only a handful of time in 2025. If we are right in saying that Kemp is barely passable as a left fielder, what kind of adventures would we see were he to be in right field?

It also brings Brandon Marsh into the conversation. There are pockets of the fanbase that consider Marsh to be expendable, someone that shouldn’t be part of any plans the team has for building a roster this season. Marsh hit .280/.342/.443 in 425 plate appearances, good for a 116 wRC+. That number would be good for 24th among all outfielders with at least 400 plate appearances, nothing to sneeze at. We all know this is a platoon situation, but pretending that Marsh isn’t worthy of a spot in the team, let alone a starting spot in the lineup is foolhardy and wrong.

The real question I would pose with anyone angry about the decision to not sign Bader and to sign Garcia instead: why are you so willing to believe that Bader’s season in 2025 is the new norm, ignoring the seven years of his being a below average player, and so readily willing to accept that Garcia cannot bounce back on a one year deal with a real hitting coach? There is truth to the fact that Bader posted some of his best metrics in a while last year…

…and they were still worse than what Garcia has done on his own.

Again, I’m perfectly willing to accept that the deal Bader ultimately accepted is one that should have been matched by the Phillies had they known that would have been the final deal. Roster machinations could have been created that would have given them an outfield alignment of Crawford-Bader-Marsh/RHH and that would have been perfectly fine. But one of the bigger questions the team has is whether or not Crawford can play center field for this team. It’s somewhat important to their short- and long-term success to figure this out. His profile simply does not work as well in left field, making that spot not really work for how they are constructed.

Having Harrison Bader back on the deal that he ultimately signed for with the Giants would have been something the Phillies should have entertained had they known he would have signed for that amount. But at the beginning of the offseason, when they did bring in Adolis Garcia on a one year deal, they acquired a player that they see as having some modicum of upside on a deal that is palatable to their long term plan. They haven’t been caught twisting in the wind with no backup plan outside of having to mend fences with Nick Castellanos had Garcia and Bader both decided not to come to Philadelphia, so it’s not as this is ultimately a failure. It just feels a little much to be lamenting the loss of Bader to the degree that it has been done so far.

He’s good, but not good enough to be that worked up about.