Bryce Harper and the Philadelphia Phillies are currently looking to bounce back after a disappointing conclusion to their 2023 playoff run, ultimately bowing out the Arizona Diamondbacks in Game 7 of the National League Championship Series despite initially taking a 2-0 lead in the series. Harper and the Phillies have gotten off to slow regular season starts before making deep inroads into the playoffs–at the expense of their NL East rival Atlanta Braves–in each of the last two campaigns, but some Philadelphia fans believe that more high-powered reinforcements might be necessary in order to get over the hump.

The natural place to look for said reinforcements is of course MLB free agency, where several big names remain on the market, including that of former NL MVP Cody Bellinger, and the latest intel suggests that the Phillies could be a potential candidate to sign the star.

“I'll keep the Phillies as a dark horse — even though president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski seems OK with the outfield situation — because frankly, other than when the team posted a .907 OPS in August, the offense wasn't all that special last season,” reported MLB senior writer David Schoenfield of ESPN.

Indeed, Cody Bellinger, who saw a slight dip in his statistics since departing the Los Angeles Dodgers for the Chicago Cubs but is still a more than formidable force in the lineup, would provide a significant boost to a Phillies hitting order that started the postseason with a bang but ended it with a whimper against the Diamondbacks in the NLCS.