It could be a long summer if Phillies don’t turn things around ‘someway, somehow’
PHILADELPHIA — It’s been a miserable first 19 games for the Phillies, who don’t look like the team equipped to meet lofty preseason expectations.
Philadelphia lost to the division rival Atlanta Braves, 9-0 in the first of three games against the Braves at Citizens Bank Park this weekend. They are lucky to be 8-11 and only 4.5 games back in the NL East. The record does not accurately reflect just how poorly they have played.
Some of the numbers are damning. Of their 11 losses, seven have come in blowout fashion (five runs or more). They are three games under .500 for the first time since June 6, 2023. At that time, Cristopher Sánchez was just over two weeks away from being recalled from Triple-A and never looking back. They have scored three runs or fewer in 10 of 19 games. They have the worst run differential in Major League Baseball.
Most of the crowd of over 43,000 stuck around on Friday night to watch Kyle Schwarber ground out to second for the final out. The only highlights were Bryce Harper’s three hits, Gritty dancing with the Phanatic in the seventh inning and Jordan Davis, the postgame country singer, not the defensive tackle from the Philadelphia Eagles.
Friday’s loss was a tough watch. The first three batters reached base safely against starter Taijuan Walker. The first inning actually wasn’t the big issue for Walker, who limited the Braves to two runs on a pair of RBI groundouts. The real gut punch came an inning later with two on, two outs and Austin Riley in a 1-2 count. Needing just one more pitch to escape the inning with limited damage, Walker left an 88 mph cutter in the middle of the plate. Riley drove it the other way for a home run that landed in the second row in right center field. Cue the boos.
Just like that, the Phillies were down 6-0 in the second inning.
Walker is a symptom of a much larger problem, one the Phillies have been unable to solve for years. He could make one more start in the rotation on Wednesday in Chicago because the Phillies have failed to develop a reliable pipeline of starting pitchers with minor league options. When Zack Wheeler returns, Walker could remain on the roster as a long man not because of the money left on his contract, but as a result of the lack of depth in the minor leagues.
Walker has a 9.16 ERA through four starts. A dejected Walker was asked postgame about staying positive amid an extremely tough start to the season.
“Just keep showing up every day and putting the work in,” Walker said. “That’s what I’ve been doing. Obviously it hasn’t been going the way I want it to go. Just keep showing up every day and keep going.”
The offense against left-handed pitching in particular may be a bigger concern. All 146 pitches thrown by the Braves on Friday night came from a pair of southpaws, starter Martin Perez and long man José Suárez. The Phillies recorded only six hits, three from Harper and two from J.T. Realmuto.
The numbers against left-handing pitching are alarming. The team is slashing a collective .179/.280/.275 against lefties. Really, these problems were evident last year, but Schwarber’s incredible 2025 campaign against southpaws did a lot to cover up the issue.
Schwarber this year has gotten off to a slow start against lefties. All six of his home runs have come against righties. He has a .411 OPS against lefties this season with a .161 slugging percentage.
Schwarber, who rarely hits outside before games, spent just under an hour pregame on Friday with hitting coach Kevin Long taking swings off the tee and taking batting practice against a new designated left-handed batting practice pitcher the club recently hired from a local junior college. Alec Bohm joined Schwarber at one point.
They are putting in the work. The results just haven’t been there.
“It’s kind of just one of those things where we gotta keep working at it,” Schwarber said. “There are some guys we haven’t seen before and guys we’ve seen before. We just gotta keep working and keep trying to put together our best approaches and our best game plans going forward. At the end of the day, it comes down to executing.”
The Phillies have won more than 90 games in each of the last three seasons. Each year, there have been struggles. The lineup’s flaws in the first four months of last year were largely tolerable thanks to the excellence of Schwarber, Harper and Turner. Things came together after the deadline, when Harrison Bader was added and a few lower in the order guys, Brandon Marsh, Bryson Stott, Otto Kemp and Max Kepler, all started to hit. The 2024 Phillies were 22 games over .500 entering May, then were just OK the rest of the way. A big part of the issue was Walker’s struggles and the inability to find a No. 5 starter that gave them a chance to win near the end of the season.
The 2023 squad were a terrible 10-16 in May, but rebounded to go 18-8 in June on the way to a fun summer and a second straight playoff berth.
The common denominator in those years? Strengths in certain parts of the roster, from the starting rotation to power at the top, did a lot to cover up flaws in other areas. They are not playing well in any phase of the game, as manager Rob Thomson said on Wednesday night.
“We’ve got to turn this thing around someway, somehow,” Thomson said postgame on Friday.
Math is on their side. There is still plenty of time for their strengths to take over, but a turnaround needs to happen soon. Otherwise, it could be a very long summer. Shades of 2012? Check back in a few weeks.
“We know that everything can’t always be great, awesome,” Schwarber said. “You’re going to have to fight through things. That’s the journey of the year.”