Would Phillies have been better off with Harrison Bader instead of Adolis García?

After the Phillies officially announced the signing of Adolis García to his one-year, $10 million deal on Dec. 16, Dave Dombrowski, Philadelphia’s president of baseball operations, indicated that the club has its three main outfielders for the 2026 season. García was added to play right field with the Phillies planning to part ways with Nick Castellanos. Brandon Marsh will return in left field. Prospect Justin Crawford has a clear path to take the center-field job.

“I think our outfield is pretty well set,” Dombrowski said.

That line of thinking left no more space for Harrison Bader, the deadline acquisition who soared with the Phillies in the last two months of 2025. He batted .305 with five home runs and an .824 OPS in 50 games for Philadelphia while playing strong defense in center field, leading an outfield unit that played its best down the stretch. Bader largely wielded a light bat for the first eight seasons of his career, but he had a career year with the Twins and Phillies before hitting free agency.

With Philadelphia all set, Bader has reportedly agreed to a two-year deal with the San Francisco Giants, according to The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal. Bader will be guaranteed $20.5 million with a chance to earn another $500,000, per the New York Post’s Jon Heyman.

Bader’s contract with San Francisco will pay him slightly more than García will make from the Phillies in 2026, with Bader’s deal lasting an extra year. But with the annual terms so close, it’s fair to wonder if the Phillies might have been better off waiting another six weeks to sign an outfielder and trying to retain Bader at that number.

Of course, García is a worthy upside bet on a one-year deal. He had an All-Star season with a legendary playoff run in 2023, and he provides a floor as a great defender while the Phillies see if he can get his offense to bounce back to something close to that level. But that’s far from a certainty. After posting an .836 OPS with the Rangers in 2023, García had a combined .675 OPS and .278 OBP over the next two years. He doesn’t walk too often and chases pitches out of the zone.

Even with his struggles at the plate, García’s bat has pop. He hit 19 home runs in 135 games last season and 25 homers in 154 games the year before. The Phillies have lacked right-handed-hitting power, and García should be able to bring that in some capacity. It would be even greater and more impactful if he can chase fewer pitches out of the zone.

Bader, another righty, is not the same kind of home-run threat. The 17 homers he hit in 2025 were the most he’s ever hit in a season. But he did have a .449 slugging percentage, higher than García has had since 2023. And while Bader’s production at the plate is likely to dip after an outlier season like he had last year, it’s not as if he was collecting cheap hits for all of August and September. He made adjustments last season that led to results. It’s hard to gauge how much staying power there will be for all of that, but he found tangible success, doing so much more recently than García has. Still, his career .714 OPS can’t be ignored.

Like García, Bader is a top-tier defender, but his ability to play center field could have allowed the Phillies to play Crawford in left field, where he might be better off as a rookie. Crawford played both center and left at Triple-A last season and has incredible speed, but he struggled with jumps and routes in center field at times. It seems like he’ll have most of the opportunities in center for Philadelphia in 2026.

Keeping Bader around could have taken some responsibilities off Crawford’s plate by putting him in left and Marsh in right field, although a new righty-hitting platoon partner would have been necessary; Otto Kemp, who appears destined to spell Marsh in left field against lefty pitchers unless the Phillies add another piece, is not a right fielder. But an outfield defense with Bader in center and Crawford and Marsh in the corners would have been quite an alignment.

Neither choice was a sure thing, and both García and Bader have their pros and cons. That’s the reality of searching for a free agent in this price range. García has performed on some of the biggest stages in the past and could absolutely end up being the more valuable player in 2026. But if the Phillies could have had Bader for the figure the Giants are going to pay, maybe it would have been a better use of resources to sign the everyday center fielder.