The Phillies’ most pressing question this spring doesn’t ultimately matter for the 2025 season. Fans have twisted themselves into knots over how Rob Thomson is going to configure the reigning National League East champion’s batting order. Haunted by meltdowns in each of the last two postseason s, sensing the imminent fall of the proverbial championship window, the lineup has provided more than enough fuel for an otherwise tepid stove. Should Trea Turner hit leadoff? Can Kyle Schwarber make more of an impact further down the order? Is Bryce Harper better second or third? Alec Bohm, third or fourth? How to arrange the righties and the lefties? What about when a lefty is on the mound? The truth, which team president Dave Dombrowski all too willingly spilled Monday in Clearwater, is that it doesn’t matter all that much. “You’d be surprised how insignificant it is,” the Phillies president of baseball operations said. “Really, it’s amazing to me. People that are very, very intelligent that do this from an analytical perspective … it’s surprising how insignificant it is.” You can hear the game show prize bells going off. It doesn’t matter – with some simple considerations – where each of the Phillies bat this year. That is merely a distraction. What matters is that Turner looks like the Turner of the fall of 2023 and not of the fall of 2024. What matters is that Bohm looks like the All-Star of last year’s first half, not the flailing playoff version. What matters is that nobody resembles the hapless swingers-and-missers of 2023 NLCS or last fall’s Mets series, specters that will hound the Phillies until a parade consigns them to history. How that happens is less vital than if it happens, and avoiding a repeat is not the purview of Thomson but the multi-millionaires he oversees. The prevailing thoughts about positional archetypes and protecting hitters is largely bunk baseball pseudo-science. Much more important is what has long guided Thomson’s batting order; where players are most comfortable, when they’re most likely to come up, against what types of pitchers and in what kinds of situations. A comfortable hitter is more likely to be a productive one. There are some common-sense guardrails that Thomson has and will continue to follow. The most pertinent is the left-right balance. It’s what will keep a righty between Schwarber and Harper at the top of the order, a more important distinction than whether the two sluggers hit first and third or second and fourth. Handedness balance is more pressing at the bottom of the order, where the tendency to use Bryson Stott eighth and Brandon Marsh ninth won’t fly as well if Schwarber leads off, presenting three straight left-handed batters for opposing lefty relievers to zone in on. Spring has offered some blueprints. Schwarber led off 11 times in spring, Turner nine. Seven of the times that Schwarber led off, Turner followed. When Turner led off, Harper followed six times. Once the top two are configured, the rest can follow. If Turner-Harper, then likely Bohm-Schwarber. If it’s Schwarber-Turner, then Harper-Bohm. The middle order of Nick Castellanos, Max Kepler and J.T. Realmuto will arrange accordingly, even if Kepler in the fifth spot may seem at first blush a tad high. A cluster of righties is not the end of the world; lefty pairs are less favorable but inevitable with five left-handed starters, a predicament that the Phillies are hoping Kepler is worth the trouble of. What is settled for Game 1 is not carved into stone. Thomson will set a lineup, see how the room adapts to it, then adjust. He won’t change after a couple of bad games, and he’ll prioritize consistency and player comfort. The debates about the lineup may continue, but they’ll do so safely outside the confines of Thomson’s closed office door. The truth of spring will be the same for the season: It’s all just thumb-twiddling until the business end arrives. The Phillies have a playoff roster. If everyone does their job competently, they will be in the postseason again, at which point the real work begins, the opening-day lineup long since trivial. The Phillies are as well positioned for a championship run as ever. In 2022, they broke camp with Bailey Falter as their fifth starter. In 2023 and 2024, that role was filled by Taijuan Walker. In 2025, Walker is the sixth starter, thrust into the rotation thanks to an injury to Ranger Suarez. Their top three starters have continued to improve year-on-year, Cristopher Sanchez most impressively so. Suarez as a fourth starter is amazing depth. Jesus Luzardo, if he gets anywhere near his past proficiency, as a fifth is tremendous. The bullpen is not as deep as last year, but ask the Mets how much that mattered in September. Andrew Painter is waiting in the wings as a potential summer trump card. The spring consternation over the lineup is a cover. Fans are searching for a fallacy, for some magic, slump-proof lineup. It doesn’t exist. If either Castellanos or Marsh is going to suddenly look lost for a week, it’s as likely to happen with them in the second and third spots as seven and eight. As long as the sample size of a playoff series remains so tiny, anything can and will happen. The only remedy is to put yourself in contention often enough that the coin flip falls your way eventually. If the worry is a way to pass time, then here’s an alternate suggestion: Enjoy the journey. The Phillies have a roster with a Hall of Famer, one of the club’s best-ever sluggers, one of its best-ever catchers, plus two of the best starting pitchers in club history, amid a cast of characters and potential club icons. The spring idleness is a reflection of growing anxiety with a roster with 13 players in their 30s, but also of not having the real problems plaguing many teams, something like 23 of 26 roster spots decided before the buses rolled to Clearwater. There was a substantial portion of the fanbase that last year, even at 45-19, waited for the inevitable drop, knowing the Phillies would somehow mess it up in the playoffs. That’s one way to mark the time of a baseball season. Another is to appreciate how rare even coming this agonizingly close to a championship is and relish it before it disappears. Contact Matthew De George at mdegeorge@delcotimes.com. ...read more read less