Should the Phillies pick up their option on José Alvarado?

The Phillies have a couple decisions to make regarding 2026 options, but it’s really just one. They’d likely pick up their end of Harrison Bader’s mutual option, but it won’t matter because Bader will almost certainly decline his. 

The real intrigue lies with José Alvarado. 

For context: The Phillies are likely going to be Alvarado’s employer in 2026. President of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said as much in his end-of-season press conference after the NLDS. 

How they get there is up in the air.

Alvarado’s option is for $9 million. The Phillies could accept those terms and guarantee his services for next season. They could also buy his contract out for $500,000 and open him up to free agency, then try to re-sign him at (one would figure) a lower price.

The reasoning in favor of picking up the option is straightforward. Before his suspension in May, Alvarado was pitching like the back-end reliever he’s been for a lot of his Phillies tenure, despite being the Phillies’ only reliable reliever until Orion Kerkering started to right the ship in late April. Alvarado allowed runs in four of those first 20 appearances, striking out over 11 batters an inning. He stranded all four inherited runners, including three (entering with one out) in his final outing.

If that’s the version that Alvarado presents next season, $9 million — for one year — is a bargain. Especially for a bullpen that, even with Jhoan Duran, still needs all the help it can get.

The conundrum is that the Phillies don’t know they’ll get that version, because he was a different pitcher post-suspension. His command escaped him. He allowed three homers in six innings, which required eight appearances. His ERA was 7.50. He finished the season on the injured list with a strained left forearm.

Of course, those results can be spun in any direction: It’s a small sample size. It was after a three-plus-month layover. Or, PED suspensions simply change players, whether he knowingly violated MLB’s drug policy or not. 

And perhaps that plays to the Phillies’ favor in a theoretical Alvarado free agency. Whether a team will be willing to commit that $9 million price tag, or any higher, to Alvarado remains to be seen. At the very least, he probably isn’t getting a multiyear contract, especially with a lockout looming. But does a contender with bullpen holes (maybe one that beat the Phillies in the NLDS) take a chance on him at an elevated cost for a year? Or is his market mild, allowing the Phillies to renegotiate for well below the $9 million figure?

There are two strategies the Phillies can take here. One is the route of opportunism — projecting Alvarado’s market, assuming it’ll be slow, declining the option and working out a deal for 2026 at a lower figure. 

The other is the route of security — opting not to roll the dice, taking advantage of their exclusive rights to retain Alvarado at a number entirely within their control. The confidence with which Dombrowski spoke of Alvarado as a 2026 Phillie two weeks ago would suggest maybe they’ll go that route. The cost of losing him, even if that chance is small, might outweigh the couple million dollars they could save if everything broke their way on the open market. 

But Dombrowski also added that “we’ll see what ends up happening.” If they were fully committed to the option, there won’t be much seeing to do. Of course, maybe he just didn’t want to back himself and the Phillies into a corner one week after their season ended.

But, yeah. We’ll see what ends up happening.