Whit Merrifield was Josh Harrison 2.0

Last offseason, the Phillies and Dave Dombrowski opted to not make any major additions to a team that had made its second straight trip to the NLCS. Practically the entire team was still under contract, so the front office elected to run the same team back for 2024. The one area they looked to improve was to add a utility player that could also platoon in the outfield and infield. They had tried to find someone before 2023 to fill that role and landed on Josh Harrison, but he was released on August 2nd after 40 games played in a one year, $2M deal.

Whit Merrifield was Philadelphia next attempt at a solution, as the Phillies gave him a one year, $8M contract on February 19th. He did not even…