The Phillies arrived in Orlando with one of the most obvious offseason agendas in baseball, and somehow still almost nothing decided. For two months, they have stayed patient, stayed quiet, and stayed respectful as Kyle Schwarber and J.T. Realmuto explored the market the Phillies allowed them to explore.
But now the Winter Meetings are here. The conversations move from phone calls to hotel suites. The stakes move from hypothetical to real. And everyone around the sport knows what that means:
The Phillies’ offseason doesn’t start until Schwarber and Realmuto do.
The Phillies essentially told both players the same thing at season’s end: take your time, check the market, but come back to us before you decide anything. Per reports, Schwarber already has, with a four-year, nine-figure offer from Pittsburgh that has become one of the loudest storylines of the first day here in Orlando. Realmuto has not hit that spotlight yet, but he will. The Phillies know it, the league knows it, and Dave Dombrowski knows that once one domino falls, the other will not be far behind.
For now, there is no standoff and no frustration, just a front office that wants clarity before it can spend, trade, or plan anything meaningful beyond these two veterans. Realmuto is central to that calculus.
A thin market + a veteran catcher = tension
Realmuto enters free agency at 34 with a résumé that still commands respect. He is no longer the best catcher in baseball, but he remains the best catcher on the free-agent market by a wide margin, according to multiple outlets. Teams looking for stability behind the plate will not find many alternatives.
That scarcity is why evaluators believe Realmuto could secure a two-year contract, possibly with incentives or an option. It is also why rival clubs are at least monitoring his market. You do not have to love the age curve to see the value in a steady veteran backstop when the catcher shelves are bare.
And the Phillies know exactly what that means: the longer this goes, the more real the possibility becomes that someone else makes an aggressive play.
Then there is the part no one on either side wants to say out loud. Schwarber’s decision affects Realmuto’s contract, and Realmuto’s affects the rest of the Phillies’ winter.
MLB.com has repeated it all offseason: re-signing Schwarber and Realmuto is the Phillies’ top priority. But if the Schwarber deal lands in the high-AAV range many expect, it compresses the payroll space for Realmuto. And if the Phillies commit significant dollars to both, it limits the size of any other moves they can make.
That is why the Phillies have not pushed the accelerator yet. They are not shopping at the top of the reliever market. They are not pursuing a seven-year splash. They cannot map out the rest of their strategy until Realmuto’s number comes into focus.
Everything else flows from this.
And here is the real problem: there is no simple alternative.
This is the quiet truth behind the Realmuto waiting game.
If J.T. Realmuto chooses another team, the Phillies do not have a clean, realistic, one-for-one replacement.
Not in the minors.
Not in free agency.
Not anywhere in the easy part of the trade market.
Rafael Marchán and Garrett Stubbs are good backups, not everyday anchors. The free-agent class offers nothing close to Realmuto’s floor. And the moment you look beyond the open market, things turn complicated fast.
That is where the Adley Rutschman murmurs come in, not as reporting but as a reflection of the reality Phillies fans already know. A few national outlets and speculative trade columns have tossed out the idea of a blockbuster for the Orioles’ franchise catcher. But it is not a practical Plan B. It is a fantasy-baseball thought exercise, a reminder that the only way to replace Realmuto is through a massive, multi-prospect swing that would reshape the organization.
The Phillies do not want to make that deal.
They do not want to bridge the position with a stopgap.
They do not want to downgrade the room behind the plate.
Which leads to the simplest truth of all: keeping Realmuto is the easiest path forward and by far the cleanest.
And while everything revolves around Schwarber first and Realmuto second, the Phillies are not naïve. They know the catcher market is unforgiving. They know stability behind the plate is one of the rarest commodities in the sport. And they know that every day Realmuto remains unsigned is another day another club can decide to get bold.
Free agency is not a loyalty test. It is a market.
And right now, the market is telling the Phillies something simple:
If you want stability behind the plate in 2026, you had better be ready to pay for the one catcher who can actually give it to you.
Because stability at catcher does not come cheap, and it never has.
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