The Philadelphia Phillies have a handful of pressing decisions to make on their own players this offseason, as several of their key players are headed toward free agency.

Kyle Schwarber, Ranger Suarez, J.T. Realmuto and Harrison Bader (the latter of whom was a trade deadline acquisition) are all set to hit the open market, and Phillies general manager Dave Dombrowski exposed a rather harsh reality when it comes to whether or not Philadelphia will be able to keep all of them.

Essentially, Dombrowski said that won't be happening.

“We’d love to have them all, if it worked out,” Dombrowski said, via Matt Gelb of The Athletic. “It’s probably impractical that you’re going to have all four of them back. We also have some young players that we’re going to mesh into our club. I’m not going to declare that anybody has a job. But there will be some people that we’re really open-minded to being with our big-league club next year, coming out of spring training.”

The Phillies won 96 games this year, but they fell to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLDS. They also lost in the NLDS last season in spite of going 95-67.

Clearly, something needs to change, so in order for Philadelphia to actually improve its roster elsewhere, it will have to make some cuts.

While the Phillies will almost certainly try their hardest to re-sign Schwarber, it's entirely possible that Suarez, Realmuto and Bader could find other homes, and Philadelphia would have to find replacements for all three. That won't be an incredibly easy task.

The Phillies have consistently had one of the highest payrolls in baseball, but it hasn't resulted in a whole lot of success. They haven't won a World Series since 2008, and since reaching back-to-back Fall Classic in '08 and 2009, Philadelphia has only returned once since.

It will definitely be interesting to see how the Phillies handle free agency in the coming weeks. It will be a delicate balancing act for sure, but this is a team that has been viewed as a World Series contender for several years running now.

In other words, Philadelphia will have to maintain its relevance as an elite team while also making shrewd moves financially. We'll see what happens.