Late last week, confidence was high the Phillies were going to sign J.T. Realmuto, the team’s great white whale this off-season. Hope reigned that Dave Dombrowski would not let the best catcher in baseball be “the one that got away,” and the optimism was rational.
Virtually every team that had been rumored to be a suitor for his services — the Mets, Yankees, Astros, Angels and Blue Jays most specifically — had either filled their catching needs with other players or signed a big-time free agent to a huge deal, which seemed to leave them without the cash to spend more than $100 million on a contract for Realmuto.