Phillies tread water in the NL at the trade deadline, despite Brandon Marsh, David Robertson and Noah Syndergaard

The Phillies got better.

They did not get better enough.

It’s that second part that I keep coming back to when trying to make sense of the fact that they somehow managed to trade one of their most valuable prospects without addressing their most glaring need.

Even if you agree that Logan O’Hoppe needed to be traded at some point, and that Brandon Marsh gives the Phillies a massive defensive upgrade in center field along with some offensive potential, and that trading one for the other was part of a perfectly sensible strategy to improve his pitching by improving the fielding behind it, you can’t call Dave Dombrowski’s trade deadline Tuesday a win without answering two questions.

Can the Phillies really win a title with three No. 5 starters and an average-to-below bullpen? And, if they can’t, how are they going to fix those things for the future when they’ve just traded away one of the few assets that would have given them a fighting chance of doing it this offseason?

There’s a lot to unpack there, so let’s take a moment to plant the goalposts:

David Robertson and Noah Syndergaard for a couple of two-dollar scratch-offs?

Win.

Brandon Marsh for a prospect who might have helped them avoid another desperate trade deadline in 2023?

Why?

But let’s start with the original claim. The Phillies may be a better team today than they were at daybreak on Tuesday. But when you compare their improvement to that of the rest of the National League, it’s clear that they lost ground. The Padres got more better. The Braves got more better. The Brewers got more better. The Cardinals got at least equally better. The Mets may have, too.

These are important considerations when it comes to evaluating the Phillies’ decision to part with O’Hoppe, a highly regarded catching prospect who was one of the team’s few blue-chip trade chips. Heading into the trade deadline, Dombrowski knew that his roster had a glaring need for a pitcher capable of starting Game 3 of a playoff series. The Phillies had plenty of discussions, Dombrowski said, but any deal for a front-line starter would have required the inclusion of at least one of the team’s three top pitching prospects. Both literally and figuratively, that was a nonstarter, which left them sitting on the sidelines as the Mariners and Yankees swung deals for the two most attractive pitchers on the market.

» READ MORE: New reliever David Robertson won’t be the Phillies’ closer, Rob Thomson says

With Luis Castillo and Frankie Montas off the table, Dombrowski tried to make the best of what was available at his desired price point. And he did a commendable job of it. In Robertson and Syndergaard, he acquired a couple of players who will give them clear upgrades over their predecessors for however long the 2022 season lasts.

Robertson (2.23 ERA, 14 saves) gives the Phillies a much better eighth- or ninth-inning option to pair with Seranthony Dominguez. With that duo in a setup/closer role and Corey Knebel, Brad Hand, Andrew Bellatti, and Jose Alvarado in front of them, the Phillies have the makings of a bullpen that can at least give Rob Thomson the sort of options a manager needs to have a fighting chance.

Syndergaard, meanwhile, is a long way from the pitcher he was during his first four seasons with the Mets. In 15 starts with the Angels, he has a 3.83 ERA that is a half-run higher than it was before his injury. His fastball velocity is down in the low-to-mid 90s. His strikeout rate and ground-ball rate are both well down from where they were in his prime. Dombrowski said that the Phillies were realistic about who Syndergaard is: a five- or six-inning pitcher who can give them a fighting chance.

» READ MORE: New reliever David Robertson won’t be the Phillies’ closer, Rob Thomson says

With Robertson and Syndergaard, the key selling point is the cost. The veteran duo came at the cost of a couple of long-shot prospects and former top overall pick Mickey Moniak, who was probably on his way to being DFA’d. If the Phillies had to settle for patchwork rent-a-players, this was a fine way to do it.

Yet patchwork was never going to dramatically improve their odds in a National League that saw each of the teams in front of the Phillies make themselves better. While they certainly are a more functional team, and one that can at least dream of a world in which everything breaks right, they didn’t get anywhere close to a point where they can feel confident about their chances of beating out the rest of the league.

The Padres added three of the top 14 hitters in the NL to a lineup that already included two of the top 20. The Braves added a starter/setup man combo similar to the Phillies’ in Jake Odorizzi and Raisel Iglesias, along with a couple of bench bats. The Brewers added two very good setup men. The Phillies needed to do what they did just to tread water.

Given the makeup of the NL and the long odds facing a team that has to fight its way up from a wild-card spot, the Phillies could easily find themselves back at square one this offseason. Whatever happens the rest of this season, they’ll begin their preparations for 2023 with only two playoff-caliber starters and one playoff-caliber late-innings reliever under contract.

» READ MORE: Phillies acquire OF Brandon Marsh from Angels and closer David Robertson from Cubs

In other words, Dombrowski will be where he was at the trade deadline, except he won’t have the option of including O’Hoppe in a package for the front-line starter that they will clearly need. That will be a small price to pay if Marsh turns out to be the player whom the Phillies project he can be. But if he turns out to be the guy who currently ranks 142nd out of 155 qualified hitters in OPS+, even his reputed Gold Glove defense in center field will not offset the benefit the Phillies would have realized if they would have been able to parlay O’Hoppe into a playoff-caliber starting pitcher.

Dombrowski clearly felt like the clock was ticking on O’Hoppe, and he was correct about that. Catching prospects are notoriously high-risk, and O’Hoppe’s stock could well be as high as it was ever going to be. With J.T. Realmuto engrained behind the plate, the Phillies were going to need to trade O’Hoppe at some point, and it made the most sense before the start of next season. But that doesn’t mean they needed to trade him now, with only a month remaining in the minor league season and the offseason hot stove looming.