With futures beckoning, Rhys Hoskins and Aaron Nola may find Philly hard to leave behind

PHILADELPHIA — Two things felt important to Rhys Hoskins Tuesday.

The first, as it has been for the last two weeks, was for his recovering body to be in Clearwater, to continue an intensive rehab on the ACL that he tore seven months and one day ago, in a bid to play meaningful baseball in 2023.

The second was to follow his heart, to see for what might be one last time – at least while wearing the proper colors, per the tastes of the assembled mob – the Philadelphia postseason frenzy that he embodied as much as anyone last year.

So after a day’s work in Florida, Hoskins boarded a plane, landed in Philadelphia just after 6 p.m. and hightailed it to Citizens Bank Park for Game 7 of the National League Championship Series.

“Obviously just to take this scene in at least one more time was also at the top of my list,” Hoskins said. “I’m thankful that the organization was able to get me here for tonight while still allowing me to get the work in that I needed to have the opportunity to play.”

Hoskins met the day’s uncertainty with his own urgency. Game 7 would prove to be the end for the 2023 Phillies, a 4-2 loss to Arizona dashing hope that Hoskins would have a World Series to return for. Yet in a way, it seemed like fitting training for the uncertainty Hoskins will wade into this winter.

Hoskins and Aaron Nola have been pillars of the organization through times both lean and near-championship. But both face a crossroads. They will be lured by promises of nine figures to leave the only professional club they’ve known. Entwined in their fate is an era of Phillies baseball that has reached near enough the summit to know the exquisite disappointment of how far short they are.

Nola has wrestled with – and mostly dodged in a polite manner – the question all year. Through 32 starts in a bumpy and at times exasperating season, through three utterly brilliant postseason starts until his struggle of a Game 6 loss to the Diamondbacks, he’s focused on the present. Grateful for his time in Philly and openly professing a desire for it to continue now that his four-year, $45 million contract has ended, Nola’s future is out of his hands.

He saw his friend, Zach Eflin, go through it last year, landing a three-year, $40 million deal with Tampa with a quarter of the pedigree Nola has, then blossom into a Cy Young candidate. Free agency presents an opportunity, perhaps one such club will furnish to the tune of nearly $200 million. But part of the price would be bidding farewell to the only organization he’s ever known.

“It’s kind of weird man, it goes by really quick,” Nola said. “It really does. It was kind of hard because Eflin and I, we were together for a while and you kind of get used to coming in every day and seeing guys like that. You know what you’re going to get. You form relationships with good friends and make good friends throughout the years. It definitely is kind of strange.”

Hoskins gravitated toward the same considerations. His feelings are as acute, if in a different way. The post-elimination farewells underscored to the first baseman, who spent so much time rehabbing away from the daily grind of the season, the depth of relationships he didn’t get to cultivate this year. His grief at the loss of a season was not of something going away but of something he never had an opportunity to truly be part of.

Hoskins demurred on whether he would’ve played in a World Series, knowing that decision wasn’t in his power. But short of some “finishing touches” in game situations, he believed he would’ve been healthy for a Game 1 in Texas come Saturday.

“I was trying to do everything in my position to make the decision hard on the manager,” Hoskins said. “… I felt ready. I was able to make a lot of progress the last couple of weeks down in Florida trying to get some live at-bats. I’m definitely excited to build on that.”

Hoskins and Nola may be – choose your managerial jargon here – just another asset on the balance sheet or employee on the payroll. But the organization’s choice of how to handle them won’t necessarily be regarded as such. They are survivors of bygone eras, under different managers and general managers, of interminable South Philly summers when avoiding 100 losses was the priority instead of striving for 100 wins. They speak of Philadelphia as not just another place from which to draw a check, even one with many zeroes, but as a home that incubated their careers.

Much as the boardroom’s cold, dispassionate math governs such transactions, the human element of kids becoming men hangs over the decision-making process.

“I think about how far we’ve gone,” Nola said. “It was a rebuilding era when we came up and all the guys who were here for a while. They had won a World Series and the playoffs all those years (ago) and they were heading out and we were heading into a rebuilding stage. I didn’t know any better, right? I was trying to make a name for myself and stay in the big leagues and try to do my best. … Just the progress is what I’m proud of.”

“I’ve grown up here,” Hoskins said. “I’ve learned a lot of things about life here. I’ve learned a lot of things about baseball here. That’s not something that I take lightly. I’ve created a lot of great relationships with people that will be in my life forever in this town and within this organization. Baseball aside, it’s a place and a group of people and an organization that I’ll hold close to my heart, for sure.”

Whatever comes next for the Phillies will be an outgrowth of an environment that Hoskins and Nola were instrumental in creating, a barren landscape of baseball that they helped return life to. It’s why Hoskins, in particular, regarded himself as maybe the “most bummed” of the Game 7 result, in addition to the most powerless. And while he stands to regain agency once his services are on the sales platform, one thing he can’t control is if the Phillies will want him back.

That would be Bryce Harper playing his position on the field, after all.

“Everybody wants to be part of something bigger than themselves,” Hoskins said. “This team was clearly that. It’s a group of guys that I think was destined to be great, and we were. We just came up short tonight.”