Phillies Retired Numbers - Who Should Be Next?
With the present somewhat bleak, thought it might be a good time to dive into the past. The Phillies are very stingy with number retirements, only retiring numbers/insignia for 12 players over 144 seasons of Phillies baseball to date. All 12 are in the HOF, with only Dick Allen having his number retired prior to his belated induction.
According to Baseball Reference, pictured above are the top 24 players in franchise history in descending order, measured by the WAR each player accumulated while playing for the Phillies. The checked players have all had their numbers retired by the Phillies, with only Roy Halladay not included in this group due to his brief tenure.
To me the circled players should be next, which would round out the number of number/insignia retirements to 15 before the 150th anniversary season in 2032. Ideally they should do it on or around the 20 year anniversary of the 2008 team. Chase Utley seems to be a relative lock if he continues to trend toward Hall of Fame election in the next year or two. In my opinion Rollins and Hamels should also have their numbers retired by the club, regardless of whether they are inducted. They are both borderline cases for the HOF, but their contributions to the best run in franchise history put them over the edge. Rollins declared the Phillies the team to beat in 2007 and personally backed it up by winning MVP that year, kicking off the best 5-year run in franchise history. Hamels never won a CY Young, but he was the NLCS and WS MVP in 2008, threw 1.5 no-hitters, and is in the top 5 all time in a number of statistical categories for Phillies pitchers.
*Honorable mentions to Bobby Abreu (1998-2006) and Sherry Magee (1904-1914), who are both top-10 all time Phillies players (according to WAR), but are also both cursed to be 1) not quite HOFers and 2) have Phillies careers that ended literally one season before things got good for the club.