PHILADELPHIA — For the Phillies, the hot stove has been more like an induction cooktop with the cord unplugged. Even a tangential morsel of gossip sounds like a Christmas ham, at this point. So sharpen up those knives and find that apple chutney.

Nolan Arenado has reportedly rejected a trade to the Houston Astros in hopes of landing with a team better poised to contend, per MLB.com. And, lo and behold, the Phillies are one of the teams on the superstar third baseman’s list.

Most offseasons, a story like this would warrant maybe half of an eyebrow raise on the ol’ news-o-meter. While the Phillies are reportedly one of six clubs on Arenado’s wish list — the Cardinals third baseman has a full no-trade clause — there has been little public indication that the interest is mutual.

Of course, if Dave Dombrowski were mulling the possibility of such a trade, he’d have a good reason to keep it on the down-low. The Phillies already have a third baseman, and it could make for an awkward spring if Alec Bohm reports to Clearwater suspecting that his bosses really did spend all offseason trying to replace him.

At this point, Arenado is mostly a diagnosis of exclusion for the Phillies. The longer they go without making a substantive move — apologies to reliever Jordan Romano and outfielder Max Kepler — the more the options dwindle. If they aren’t willing or able to spend prospects on somebody like Kyle Tucker, and they aren’t willing to spend big dollars on somebody like Alex Bregman, and they are surveying the trade market for Bohm, then what options remain? The market isn’t exactly teeming with hitters who would represent an upgrade over Bohm.

Question is, does Arenado even qualify as such a hitter? Or would this be more of a case of doing something for something’s sake?

That may sound like a strange thing to say about a player who has won 10 Gold Gloves and five Silver Sluggers and placed third in NL MVP voting as recently as 2022. But Arenado hasn’t been close to that player in a couple of years.

Not only are the top-line numbers down — OPS+ has him as 4% above league average in 2023-24, albeit with 42 home runs — but the underlying metrics suggest a player who has been victim chiefly to the irreversible effects of Father Time. His average exit velocity and hard hit percentage were both down dramatically last season. His ground ball percentage is up and his home run percentage is down.

There are three sets of numbers that kind of sum up the Arenado conundrum:

— Arenado in 2021-22:.273/.335/.513, 134 OPS+, 64 HR

— Arenado in 2023-24: .269/.320/.426, 104 OPS+, 42 HR

— Bohm in 2023-24:.277/.329/.442, 112 OPS+, 35 HR

There’s a lot to unpack there. In terms of skill set, Arenado is much closer to your prototypical first-division third baseman — power plus patience plus glove. There’s no question that, at his peak, he was a dramatically different hitter from Bohm. The question is where both of these players currently are in relation to their peaks.

Really, there are two ways to look at the calculus. Why bother swapping Bohm out for a player who was a lesser hitter last season and may be on an aging curve similar to Whit Merrifield’s? Especially given that said hitter still has three years and $91.5 million left on his contract?

Presumably, the Phillies would need to part with something of value for the Cardinals to eat some of that money. Right now, Bohm projects to earn somewhere in the neighborhood of $20 million in his last two years of arbitration combined. That’s a huge gap the Phillies would need to bridge to make Arenado a net neutral addition from a fiscal perspective. Are Arenado’s glove and the potential bounce-back season really worth trading away a legit prospect and a better hitter?

On the other hand ...

If the Cardinals are looking at Arenado strictly sunk cost — i.e., all they care about is getting another team to eat as much of the contract as they can — and if the Phillies can acquire him without dramatically increasing their payroll, and if that means they can trade Bohm for a better package than they part with for Arenado ... if all that is true, then why not?

Even if Bohm does have the breakout season for which the Phillies have been yearning, that will make it more likely that he leaves via free agency after 2026. And are the odds of that happening really that much better than the odds that Arenado ends up having a 34-year-old season that is closer to his 31-year-old season than the last couple have been?

Even if neither of those happen, isn’t it a decent bet that Arenado still has a couple of 2024-level seasons left in him, i.e. seasons in which his production (as a hitter) was in the same ballpark as Bohm’s?

Long story short, there are a lot of variables to consider. And maybe that’s why the Astros were the team (reportedly) on the verge of trading for Arenado rather than the Phillies.

Is there a scenario where an Arenado/Bohm arbitrage works for the Phillies? Sure. But they can’t force it.

There’s a chance that sounds silly a year from now. Arenado is aging but hardly ancient. He won’t turn 34 until a couple of weeks after opening day. He is a month younger than J.T. Realmuto, 13 months older than Nick Castellanos, 16 months older than Bryce Harper.

His 2023 numbers were mostly the result of a rough first month and a half. After May 10, he hit .278/.326/.828 with 23 home runs in 454 plate appearances.

As for 2024? Well, that’s the multi-million dollar question.

Arenado began last season a lot like he did 2023. Difference is, he ended it the same way. He hit just one home run and three doubles in his last 101 plate appearances.

His walk rate plummeted after his 2022 MVP campaign, from 9.1 in 2016-22 to 6.7 in 2023 and 6.9 in 2024. He has seen a jump in his pull rate and a rise in his ground-ball-to-fly-ball ratio. In 2024, his average exit velocity dipped considerably to 86.3.

His postseason sample size isn’t robust enough to influence a decision one way or another. But it is worth noting that he is 5 for 33 with nine strikeouts, no walks and one extra-base hit (a home run). So you can’t really give him an edge over Bohm there.

This is one of those hypotheticals you can’t judge until you know the actuals in terms of prospects and dollars. At the moment, it feels like a stretch.

©2024 The Philadelphia Inquirer. Visit inquirer.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.