The Phillies have made a tough call at backup catcher, sending fan-favorite Garrett Stubbs down to Triple-A Lehigh Valley on Thursday.
Rafael Marchán will now serve as J.T. Realmuto’s understudy behind the plate.
The decision came down to a simple but frustrating reality of baseball’s business side: Stubbs still had a minor-league option left, while Marchán didn’t. If the Phillies wanted to keep both catchers in their organization, this was their only real choice.
“It is the business side,” said Dave Dombrowski, the team’s president of baseball operations. “Sometimes it works for you, and sometimes it works against you.”
Dombrowski admitted Stubbs couldn’t have done much more to keep his spot.
“I don’t really know what more he could have done,” he explained. “It would’ve been different if Marchán had come here and just didn’t play well or we didn’t like what we saw at all.”
Stubbs, 31, had been Realmuto’s main backup for the past three years. While his batting numbers weren’t spectacular—hitting .222 with a .305 on-base percentage—his impact went far beyond the stat sheet.
He became a beloved figure in both the clubhouse and among Phillies fans.
Most memorably, Stubbs was the mastermind behind adopting Calum Scott’s cover of “Dancing on My Own” as the team’s victory anthem during their thrilling 2022 World Series run. That musical choice became the soundtrack to Philadelphia’s postseason, though they ultimately fell to the Houston Astros in the Fall Classic.
“Somebody’s gotta do it,” Stubbs told Billboard earlier this year about becoming the team’s unofficial DJ. “Because my role on the team as far as playing time goes is limited, I just became the guy who came into the locker room after the games to turn on the music.”
What started small quickly grew into something special.
“As guys started to like certain songs, I just started to accumulate the ones that everyone liked and put them into a playlist. And then slowly but surely, there ended up being 1, 2, 20, 50, 100 songs on the playlist.”
While Marchán might not match Stubbs’ clubhouse presence right away, the 26-year-old could actually be an upgrade on the field. In limited big-league action—just 40 games—he’s hit an impressive .279 with decent power, posting numbers well above league average.
Meanwhile, Realmuto enters the final year of his contract, with both sides having previously expressed interest in working out an extension to keep the star catcher in Philadelphia beyond this season.
