Apr 10, 2023; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; Philadelphia Phillies President of Baseball Operations Dave Dombrowski before game against the Miami Marlins at Citizens Bank Park. Mandatory Credit: Eric Hartline-USA TODAY Sports
PHILADELPHIA - Dave Dombrowski likes to tell a story to prove a point.
On Tuesday, while his team was going through a workout, their first in preparation for the NLDS that starts here Saturday against either Cincinnati or the Los Angeles Dodgers, Dombrowski was holding court with the media and being asked all kinds of questions.
At one point, the discussion turned to players who earlier this season seemed to be on the precipice of not being a valuable part of what the Phillies were trying to achieve this season - Bryson Stott, Max Kepler and Brandon Marsh.
All three have had a renaissance after reaching their lowest points, probably in their careers.
Stott was an automatic out at the bottom of the lineup and was rolled into an absolute platoon with Edmundo Sosa.
Kepler was on the brink of being designated for assignment, before the Phillies decided to give him one last run to prove he belonged.
Marsh has been going well for a while now, but his April was as awful as one can find on record.
It was fair, at varying stages of this season, to wonder if any of them would be a part of October baseball.
That's why Dombrowski told the following story:
Max Kepler, Bryson Stott and Brandon Marsh all struggled earlier in the season. Dave Dombrowski didn’t give up on them.
He shared an example of a future Hall of Famer he didn’t give up on, either.
(via @GraceDelPizzo) pic.twitter.com/SmKEmNoAJW
"I remember 1983," Dombrowski said, as if he was gathering a bunch of impressionable children around his rocking chair to teach a valuable lesson. "I was with the Chicago White Sox, and I was assistant general manager at that time. I was jogging in the afternoon, which I used to do quite often with (White Sox manager) Tony LaRussa. ... It was May 20-something. Carlton Fisk was hitting .160 and everybody said he doesn't look like Pudge. You need to get him out of the lineup. Get him out of there. He's done.
"Tony was struggling with it too, saying, 'Yeah, Pudge is really scuffling. I tried dropping him down (in the lineup).' Well, he made a little adjustment with his swing with (hitting coach) Charley Lau, and he ended up second in the league in MVP and played for 10 more seasons."
The lesson was, even when you are ready to give up on a player, you need to give him more time just to be sure you aren't making a mistake.
Ask the Chicago Cubs how they feel today about non-tendering Kyle Schwarber after the 2020 season.
"You just have to really be careful before you make (a decision), because it's such a difficult game to play and there are so many ups and downs," Dombrowski said. "But you do have to have patience, and patience can be tough, but you have to have it."
The same can be said for the players.
When they are going through their darkest days in their profession, being patient with the work they are doing on a daily basis is how it will eventually pay dividends.
Using Schwarber as an example again, he talked last week about how this season has been the culmination of the work he began with hitting coach Kevin Long when they were together in Washington in 2021. Sometimes it takes that long for everything to come together.
For Marsh, he was really feeling it. back in April, when he made it through an entire month (which was shortened by an injury) without registering a hit.
The pressure and the noise was getting to him. But there was a support group of people who helped him get through it.
There was Garrett Stubbs, who reminded him of who he was during a rehab assignment in Lehigh Valley.
But there was also Dombrowski.
"I need to thank him so much," Marsh said. "He was coming up to me throughout April and poking me and telling me, 'Hey, don't forget how good you are. Go out there and be the Brandon Marsh we all know,'" Marsh said. "Just to have those reassuring comments and side conversations, they go a lot longer way than people know.
"Going through it and having your jefe come up to you and be like, 'Hey, Bro, you're all right. Just clean it up and you're going to be smooth sailing the rest of the year.' ... That's what really and truly matters.... It was a good feeling when I was at the bottom and it made it easier for me to climb that mountain."
For Kepler, it was a little different, since he didn't have the cachet of time with the Phillies like Marsh did. He was the new guy trying to make an impression, and not doing a good job of it.
That's when Dombrowski had similar conversations with him.
"Dave approached me multiple times and told me to just be myself," Kepler said. "(He said to) relax and that I looked tense out there. Maybe that had to do with being in a new environment. I've had plenty of discourses with him where he was just trying to relax me and tell me that I belong here and that I'm a guy. That's great coming from him.
"It was essential for me and it's great awareness on his end too to understand that guys in this clubhouse have emotions and feelings and they sometimes need to be calmed."
If the Phillies are going to break through and win the World Series, it's going to have to be with contributions from more than the star players at the top of the lineup.
Guys like Marsh, Kepler and Stott are going to be a big part of it as well. And Dombrowski won't be surprised if they are the right in the thick of making the Phillies tick in October.
"We always thought they were very solid players," Dombrowski said. "If every club ran through players like people wanted us to, you wouldn't have any players. That's the reality of it. You keep looking at it. Sometimes we know somebody may be hurting a little bit that you don't know and they don't want it to be known. Sometimes you're in a position where their bat speed is not quite as quick, but you know it's there. Sometimes, ... they're chasing more pitches. ... The hard part is when you look at somebody and then you say, 'they're through.' But I've been wrong on those things, too. It's really hard."
But if they do come through in the postseason, then Dombrowski's patience will pay off.
And as for it being hard?
Well, we all remember what Jimmy Dugan said about baseball being hard in A League of Their Own:
