Phillies see a handful of familiar names head to free agency to kickstart offseason

Like so many other teams around the league, the Philadelphia Phillies have been extremely active in the early offseason. On Monday, the club announced a flurry of roster moves including the additions of two new pitchers and a group of players going the opposite way and electing free agency.

According to the Phillies, the following players cleared waivers, were outrighted off of the club’s 40-man roster and elected free agency in lieu of reporting to Triple-A:

RHP Yunior Marte
RHP Luis Ortiz
RHP Freddy Tarnok
LHP Kolby Allard
INF Rodolfo Castro

Nearly every single one of this quintet spent time on the Phillies’ big-league roster in 2024. There’ve been promises of change coming thrown around for weeks now, but the first instances of this have come in this group of small-name players entering the free agent pool.

Phillies see five more players elect free agency

This group will join Jeff Hoffman, Carlos Estévez and Spencer Turnbull as members of the 2024 Phillies entering the open market. While Hoffman and Estévez will earn high-dollar, multi-year pacts, the same cannot be said for this group.

Marte, 29, made 23 relief appearances for the club this season, with virtually none of them being stress free. He finished his year with a ghastly 6.92 ERA, 5.63 FIP and 59 ERA+, which puts him 41 percent below league-average on the mound. He also struck out just 23 batters while walking 15 in 26 innings of work. To put it nicely, he won’t be missed.

Then there’s Ortiz, another 29-year-old. The right-hander made 14 appearances for the club in 2023 but managed to take the mound at the game’s highest level just one time in 2024. Ortiz, a five-year veteran, took the mound on March 30 and then had his season wiped out by Tommy John surgery.

At one point, Allard was a first-round pick that was supposed to turn into something once he fully developed. Now, he’s a seven-year veteran who can’t even put together an above-average season to save his life. The left-hander made seven appearances (four starts) for the Phillies in 2024, ultimately surrendering 15 earned runs on 34 hits in just 27 innings, resulting in an ERA of 5.00 and an ERA+ of 82. He, like most others here, will get nothing more than a minor league contract for 2025.

Tarnok, another former Braves prospect who was meant to become something bigger, is one of two players here who didn’t see any time in the big leagues for the Phillies this season. Instead, he made 17 appearances between two of the club’s minor league affiliates, as well as six more in the Athletics system. All told, he had a 7.39 ERA across 31 2/3 innings, which is not going to be enough to earn him a job on any team’s big league roster next year.

Then there’s Castro, who was acquired from the Pirates at the 2023 trade deadline for Bailey Falter. He made his way into 14 games for the Phillies down the stretch last year, but spent the entirety of the 2024 campaign in the minor leagues before an August injury wiped out the remainder of his season. The 25-year-old made it into just 23 minor league games this season, hitting three home runs while hitting .221 with a .636 OPS.