The Phillies did not come away empty-handed at the deadline, but they still left a very obvious hole untouched. Luis Arraez and Brooks Raley give them help for the stretch run, yet the one thing Philadelphia never truly addressed was the need for a right-handed hitting outfielder.
The club can point to the defensive shuffle that sent Bryce Harper back to right field, but that move is not a real fix. Harper has already dealt with knee pain from playing the outfield, and moving him there was not required just to make room for Arraez.
More to the point, Philadelphia needed right-side power, not another left-handed bat. Through August 26, the Phillies’ right-handed hitters owned a league-worst .658 OPS.
They also sat last in slugging at .369 and were 24th in homers with 60.
That is why Jo Adell stands out as the missed opportunity that hurts the most. He was rumored as a fit, and he would have checked the boxes the Phillies were trying to fill. Instead, Dave Dombrowski passed, and Adell landed with the Cleveland Guardians.
The early returns in Cleveland have been exactly the kind of jolt a lineup can use. In his first 20 games after the trade, Adell is hitting .230/.318/.459 with four homers and 18 RBIs. For a Guardians team that has also struggled badly to get power from its right-handed bats, that kind of production matters.
Adell’s path makes the whole thing even more complicated. He has been a maddening player for much of his career, once carrying the label of one of baseball’s elite prospects before injuries and inconsistency slowed everything down.
Over time, he settled into a strikeout-heavy power profile. In 2025, he launched a career-best 37 homers, but his .293 on-base percentage told the other side of the story.
He also graded out poorly in the field, where his athletic tools were undermined by shaky baseball instincts.
This season with the Angels, Adell posted a 90 wRC+ and just 0.1 fWAR over 111 games in Anaheim. Even with the spectacular three-homer-robbery game on his resume, he was still a subpar defender.
So yes, it would be easy to look at the numbers and say the Phillies may have dodged a bullet. But Adell’s own words add another layer.
When the Guardians visited Anaheim, he reflected on his time with the Angels and said, “I turned into a man and a big leaguer in the Angels organization. I got a chance to grow up and find who I was as a player.
It’s really a full-circle moment to be here and be on the other side and playing this group,” Adell told reporters.
That matters because Adell was rushed. A first-round pick out of Ballard High School in Kentucky in 2017, he reached the majors in 2020 after the minor league season was canceled because of the COVID-19 Pandemic. He was clearly not ready, striking out 41.7% of the time in 38 games.
His prospect ceiling was always that of a five-tool player, and he was asked to carry expectations before he had the chance to settle in. Now he is in a new setting, at an age where he may be entering his prime, and with team control through next season. That made him a worthwhile gamble for Philadelphia, whether he turned into the right-handed bat they needed or the more complete player his talent once suggested.
Either way, the Phillies passed on a chance to solve a roster problem and possibly land a much bigger payoff down the road. That is what makes this one sting.
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For Phillies fans, Utley has always lived in that complicated space where edge and excellence overlap. He spent his big league career from 2003 to 2018 and fell short of Cooperstown on his third Hall of Fame ballot, drawing 59.1 percent of the vote, which only adds another layer to how his legacy gets discussed. Beltrans comments are the kind of reminder that in Philadelphia, the story around Utley is never just about the numbers, and it is rarely settled for good. [Read more 🡒]