Will Phillies Move On From Former All-Star Catcher After This Season?

The Philadelphia Phillies are one of the hottest teams in baseball right now, but they will have a lot of major decisions looming in the offseason.

After a sluggish start to the year, the Phillies are now red hot and have taken over first place in the National League East.

Philadelphia has been a fairly complete team once again this campaign. So far, the starting rotation has lived up to the hype of being one of the best in the league. Furthermore, the bullpen has had some issues, but things seem to be improving aside from the recent suspension of Jose Alvarado.

In the lineup, the talented core of the team is still producing at a high level.

With the Phillies being a veteran squad, the window of opportunity to win a title with this group is quickly closing. In addition to some key players getting older, they also have a lot of notable free agents at the end of the campaign.

The 2026 version of the team is certainly going to be looking different, but that might not be a bad thing.

Will the Phillies Let a Veteran Player Walk?

Jim Bowden of The Athletic (subscription required) recently wrote about Father Time starting to catch up with Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto.

“Realmuto has started to show his age, but it hasn’t been a precipitous decline. His home runs have dipped from 22 to 20 to 14 over the past three years, and this season, he has only four," he wrote.

Even though he has been a great player for the last several years, Realmuto is a catcher on the wrong side of 30 years old, and is quickly approaching 35 years old.

From a production standpoint, things are starting to dip. In 2025, he has slashed .241/.314/.399 with five home runs and 19 RBI.

The drop in power is where he has most noticeably seen a decline. This is the first season in his career with a slugger percentage below .400, excluding 11 games with the Miami Marlins in 2014.

Realmuto has had an excellent career with multiple All-Star appearances and Gold Gloves, but he is simply getting older and the catcher position takes a massive toll on the body.

Even though he isn’t a detriment to the team by any means, his offensive dip in production has contributed to some of the struggles of the lineup at times.

As a free agent at the end of the year, the catcher position will certainly be one the Phillies might look to get younger and make a change. However, Realmuto will likely still be able to find a starting job in the league, it might just not be with Philadelphia.