Category: Phillies/MLB

BALTIMORE — A few minutes after it ended — the game, and the Phillies’ losing skid — Dave Dombrowski poked his head into Don Mattingly’s office.

“I was just telling him,” Dombrowski said, straight-faced, “about the four trades we made.”

Winning, it seems, brings out the comedian in everyone.

But the Phillies earned a few moments of levity here Saturday night, near the end of a tension-filled week — less than 48 hours before the trade deadline — with a 5-0 blanking of the Orioles to halt a four-game losing streak.

The record will reflect that they did it with six scoreless innings from Cristopher Sánchez and timely hitting from Alec Bohm, Brandon Marsh, and, with two outs, Justin Crawford in a four-run eighth inning.

A closer inspection reveals the Phillies won by doing the little things. To wit:

• J.T. Realmuto blocked a sinker in the dirt from atypically erratic Sánchez with the bases loaded in the sixth inning before Trea Turner fielded Leody Taveras’ high chopper to extinguish the threat.
• Bryson Stott capped a 15-pitch duel — the longest at-bat in the majors this season — with a one-out single in the seventh inning to knock tough Orioles starter Shane Baz from the game.
• Crawford ran down a ball in right-center field when the game was scoreless in the fourth inning.

“It was kind of a complete game for us,” Mattingly said. “We caught the ball. Sánchy was good, got out of jams, which is not ever going to be easy for you. Just kind of the whole game today felt like a clean game.”

Indeed, little things go a long way.

That’s always true, of course, but especially with the trade deadline bearing down at 6 p.m. Monday. It’s down to the wire for teams on the buy-sell fence. Some clubs, such as the Orioles, may not choose a lane until Monday morning, if at all.

The Phillies, who hold the final wild card in the National League, firmly are in the buyers’ club. But they need a late-inning reliever, a right-handed bat, and probably a starting pitcher to hold off a charge from the Padres and Marlins — and maybe the Pirates and Nationals, too.

Mostly, though, they need to get back to winning.

It was no wonder, then, that Sánchez shrugged off the notion that a start in which he equaled his career-high with five walks was uncharacteristic for him.

“Not weird, not rare,” he said with a smile through the team interpreter. “Just an excellent outing. We won.”

Or that Crawford gave a different answer altogether upon being asked which was more satisfying: his catch to rob extra bases from Taylor Ward early in the game or his two-run single late?

“I think just coming out with a win, honestly,” the rookie center fielder said. “Being able to get that win right there was huge for us. And hopefully we could keep the momentum going and get another one [Sunday].”

It surely will help to have Zack Wheeler on the mound.

The Phillies look like a World Series contender whenever their top three starters — Sánchez, Wheeler, and Jesús Luzardo — are on the mound. Even when they don’t have their sharpest stuff.

Sánchez overcame spells of poor control, twice escaping bases-loaded jams. In the fourth inning, he struck out Taveras on a sinker that clipped the inside corner. In the sixth, with the Phillies clutching a 1-0 lead, Realmuto knocked down a first-pitch sinker in the dirt before Sánchez got the chopper to Turner.

“Oh, it was big,” Sánchez said of sidestepping the sixth-inning jam. “After the inning ended, I just took a deep breath and said, ‘Thank God.’ Too many walks today, and we know that not the type of pitcher that I am or want to be.”

Sánchez also had a few words for the Orioles’ dugout.

“They were yelling some stuff, some things,” he said. “I saw one of their coaches talking a little. But what they don’t know is that those type of things, that motivates me. I take as fuel. That fuels me. I just get motivated by that.”

Given the bullpen’s recent problems, Mattingly surely exhaled after the four-run eighth inning. Rather than a cuticle-chomping finish, lefty José Alvarado was able to work with a big lead before turning it over to Jhoan Duran, pitching for the first time since his blown save five nights earlier in Miami.

“We got a little breathing room there,” Mattingly said.

Dombrowski continues to pursue help for the bullpen, a starting pitcher, and a right-handed bat. The rival Braves landed righty-hitting outfielder Lane Thomas from the Royals late Saturday night. Thomas was a Phillies target, too.

Righty-hitting outfielder Bryan De La Cruz has filled in well. He’s 8-for-18 since getting called up from triple A, including an RBI single to break a scoreless stalemate in the fifth inning.

“De La’s always kind of like day in, day out, you know?” Mattingly said. “He plays solid defense, doesn’t really make mistakes. The at-bats are good.”

It’s something to think about.

Meanwhile, a victory put everyone in a good mood — at least for a night.

BALTIMORE — For six weeks, there was a defined order to how Don Mattingly ran the Phillies’ bullpen.

Then, Brad Keller blew out his elbow.

“I think it’s just a man down, right?” Mattingly said Saturday, a night after Orion Kerkering set a two-run lead ablaze in the seventh inning of a 6-4 loss to the Orioles. “It’s one less guy. And [Keller] was kind of the eighth-inning guy. Any time that guy is no longer there, just like a totem pole, everybody takes a step up.”

At least until the void is filled from somewhere else.

The trade deadline is two days away — 6 p.m. Monday — and president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski is trying to fill multiple needs. Chief among them: late-inning relief, which was amplified by Friday night’s seventh-inning meltdown.

Keller signed a two-year, $22 million contract in the offseason to be the primary setup man for star closer Jhoan Duran. And Mattingly used him as such, with Kerkering and lefty José Alvarado mostly in the sixth and seventh innings.

Without Keller, Jonathan Bowlan has taken on a higher-leverage role alongside Kerkering from the right side. Alvarado has been better lately after an erratic first half in which underlying metrics suggested he was outpitching a poor ERA.

And still, the Phillies are a reliever (or two) short.

“For sure, yeah, we’re concerned,” catcher J.T. Realmuto said. “But we believe we have the guys in this room to get it done. We’ve got guys that have gotten a lot of big outs for us in the last few years and with really good stuff.”

The Phillies have been linked to old friend Jeff Hoffman, who has a 4.02 ERA for the Blue Jays but also has given up two earned runs in 19⅔ innings since June 9. They have expressed interest in Padres lefty Adrián Morejón, but San Diego was only game behind the Phillies for the last wild-card spot entering play Saturday.

Kerkering sounded like he expects that the Phillies will reinforce the bullpen.

“Everyone knows it at the end of the day,” he said. “But I don’t think anyone thinks about it, like when you’re out there or getting ready for the day.”

A change in Painter

Andrew Painter knew he was going to pitch Friday night. He didn’t imagine it would be for the Phillies.

“No,” he said, laughing.

But team officials met Thursday and decided Painter represented the Phillies’ best chance to win a game from the fifth-starter spot. So, they recalled him from triple A, and he gave up two runs in six innings, among his best starts in his brief major league career.

Will he make his next start when the No. 5 spot comes around again Wednesday at home against the Nationals?

“He’s in our rotation,” Mattingly said. “So at this point, there’s no talk of sending him out or anything like that.”

In other words, check back after the trade deadline.

But team officials agreed that Painter demonstrated improvement in his return from the minors. In particular, he ditched his splitter and replaced it with a circle-changeup, which gave him a better offspeed weapon against left-handed hitters.

“The split was great early this year, and then got a little inconsistent and started cutting it,” Painter said. “So I was just looking for some sort of shape that was consistent, something where I knew what it was going to do, where it was going to go when I threw it.”

Painter worked with the Phillies’ pitching department to review starts from his breakout 2022 season in the minors. The effectiveness of his changeup stood out. So, Painter went back to the circle grip and started throwing it in triple-A games.

“It took probably two or three starts to get a feel for the changeup,” Painter said. “It’s such a feel pitch, whereas the splitter, you kind of just grip it and throw it as hard as you can. I feel like not pregripping a splitter 90 times a game helps. I think it helps the fastball a little bit.”

Over the last few weeks, the Phillies have scouted many available starting pitchers, including the Giants’ Robbie Ray, the Blue Jays’ Kevin Gausman, and the Mets’ Clay Holmes and Freddy Peralta.

As the deadline nears, they will have to decide if Painter is more trustworthy in the No. 5 starter spot. He has a 6.72 ERA is 15 games (13 starts).

“If there’s any way I can do that,” Painter said, “it’s something I want to do.”

Rincones sits again

Gabriel Rincones Jr.’s spot in the outfield mix is getting more tenuous by the day.

For the third time this week, Rincones — a left-handed hitter — didn’t start against a right-handed pitcher. Instead, righty-swinging Bryan De La Cruz was in right field. Rincones, on a 2-for-27 skid with 13 strikeouts, is batting .167 with a .488 OPS overall.

“I feel like I’ve watched enough that you’re just not seeing balls getting squared up,” Mattingly said. “If he was hitting balls on the nose all over the place and just not having results, it’d be different then. With what we’re seeing, I think De La gives us a better chance to win today.”

The Phillies are trying to add a right-handed bat before the trade deadline, though Rincones’ struggles may widen the search to include a left-handed hitter, too.

Extra bases

Right-hander Ramon Marquez, an emerging prospect in the Phillies’ farm system, tossed five scoreless innings and struck out seven betters on 68 pitches for high-A Jersey Shore. … Switch-hitting outfielder Steward Berroa cleared waivers and was outrighted to triple A. Berroa was designated for assignment last week. … Zack Wheeler (10-2, 2.53 ERA) is scheduled to start the series finale at 1:35 p.m. Sunday against Orioles righty Kyle Bradish (7-9, 3.74).

BALTIMORE — When the Phillies arrived here this week, they were met by more than a dozen club executives, analysts, and scouts.

It was time for a summit.

In case you hadn’t heard, the trade deadline is Monday — 6 p.m., to be exact. As the hours tick down, Dave Dombrowski is huddling with his lieutenants — owner John Middleton made the short trip, too — to come up with a plan to address multiple holes, with considerable focus on a right-handed bat and a starting pitcher.

And then, Orion Kerkering reminded everyone Friday night that the Phillies need bullpen help, too — maybe more than anything else.

Kerkering, the team’s most trustworthy setup reliever, melted like soft serve in the seventh inning. He gave up four runs and spoiled the return of Andrew Painter (remember him?) in a fall-from-ahead 6-4 loss to the Orioles, the Phillies’ fourth consecutive defeat and 10th in 13 games since the All-Star break.

“It’s frustrating because can’t give this team a chance to win, almost, it feels like,” Kerkering said. “And it [ticks] me the [heck] off — a lot. I’ve just got to figure it out.”

After climbing back from a 9-19 start and reaching a high-water mark of 11 games over .500 on July 20, the Phillies are 57-53. In a 13-day span, they went from two games behind the division-leading Braves to eight back.

Suddenly, even their hold on a playoff spot is tenuous, down to 1½ games over the Padres and Marlins for the final National League wild card. And amid the free fall, Dombrowski put his arm around Bryce Harper after the game in a hallway outside the clubhouse for a chat in full view of players and staff.

“It’s definitely not the brand of baseball that we want to be playing,” said J.T. Realmuto, whose solo homer in the sixth inning opened a 4-2 lead behind Painter. “We’ve got the guys in this room to win. We know that we just have to play better.”

But the roster is springing leaks. Just as Realmuto and Trea Turner begin to give the Phillies more production from the right side of the plate and Painter provides six encouraging innings from the problematic fifth-starter spot, the bullpen is starting to look cooked.

Take Kerkering, for instance. Pressed into even higher-leverage duty after Brad Keller was lost to Tommy John surgery, he has walked five of 25 batters over his last five appearances, including the Orioles’ Colton Cowser with one out after allowing a leadoff single.

“The hits will come, but walks you can control,” Kerkering said. “It’s just one of those things that, it’s been a struggle this year, and yeah, it just [ticks] me off to keep walking guys.”

But interim manager Don Mattingly stuck with Kerkering, and pinch-hitting Christian Encarnacion-Strand ripped a game-tying two-run double on a sweeper that wasn’t a bad pitch.

Truth was, it wasn’t bad enough.

“It was a ball, but we wanted that pitch pretty far off the plate,” Realmuto said. “He’s a guy that, he’ll chase quite a bit, so we were trying to expand pretty big. I thought it was a decent pitch, just not quite what we wanted.”

Still, two batters later, Kerkering was one strike from keeping the game tied. Instead, he hit Pete Alonso with a fastball. Mattingly called on lefty reliever Tim Mayza, who gave up a two-run triple to Gunnar Henderson.

“Kerky, we felt like was the perfect guy for the mixed [lefty-righty] pocket we were going to get there,” Mattingly said. “Even with the pinch-hitter, I thought it was the right guy. It didn’t work out.”

In recent days, the Phillies have sent their scouts to watch starting pitchers, right-handed hitters, and relievers. And while the first two needs might be more essential to getting them into the playoffs, the latter is emerging as perhaps their biggest overall weakness.

Especially if Painter can stabilize the rotation.

The Phillies are 5-22 from the fifth-starter spot, including 12 losses in a row. But Painter, who found out roughly 24 hours before pitching that his next start would be back in the majors, overcame a two-run homer from Alonso in the first inning to get a lead to the bullpen.

With a new grip on his changeup and better command of his fastball, Painter retired 10 batters in a row at one point. When he got Leody Taveras to ground into an inning-ending double play to end the sixth inning, he clapped his glove.

“Andy was really good tonight,” Mattingly said.

Good enough to dissuade the Phillies from trading for a starter? Probably not. Maybe they can address multiple needs by finding a starter who can move to the bullpen in the playoffs. (The Mets’ Clay Holmes or the Giants’ Robbie Ray spring to mind.)

After all, the bullpen torpedoed the Phillies in the last three postseasons, since the 2023 NL Championship Series. In last year’s NL Division Series, the Phillies had 3-2 and 1-0 leads against the Dodgers in the seventh inning of Games 1 and 4, respectively. They lost both games.

Surely, then, the bullpen must still be a concern.

“For sure, yeah, we’re concerned,” Realmuto said. “But we believe we have the guys in this room to get it done. We’ve got guys that have gotten a lot of big outs for us in the last few years and with really good stuff.”

Kerkering sounded like he expects that the Phillies will reinforce the bullpen.

“Everyone knows it at the end of the day,” he said. “But I don’t think anyone thinks about it, like when you’re out there or getting ready for the day.”

Said Mattingly: “[The bullpen] hasn’t been good lately. It’s really been pretty good up until this point. This too shall pass.”

Maybe with a trade or two.

BALTIMORE — Outfielders who are productive from the right side of the plate and potentially available in this trade market are almost as rare as a Mickey Mantle rookie card.

The Phillies are getting an up-close look at one of them.

The Orioles’ Taylor Ward took a .383 on-base percentage into the final weekend before the trade deadline. He would be a fit for the Phillies, who were last in the majors with a .279 on-base mark and .639 OPS from their right-handed hitters.

One obstacle: The Orioles are on the buyer-seller fence.

“We’re not going to have a strong bias in either direction,” Orioles president of baseball operations Mike Elias said before Baltimore opened a three-game series against the Phillies. “We put ourselves in a position where we’re not declaring ourselves to be in one bucket or another in terms of buying or selling.”

The Orioles entered the weekend with a 53-56 record and haven’t been over .500 since April 14 (9-8). But they were only 2½ games out of a wild-card spot in a mediocre, to put it kindly, American League.

Elias said the Orioles are closing in on getting catchers Adley Rutschman and Samuel Basallo, third baseman Blaze Alexander, starter Chris Bassitt, and closer Ryan Helsley back from the injured list.

And unlike National League bubble teams, who would have to contend in October with the superpower Dodgers and Brewers, the field is wide-open in the AL. Any team that makes the playoffs has a chance to make a deep run.

In that case, the Orioles may hold on to Ward, sixth in the AL in on-base percentage. Then again, he’s a pending free agent. And the righty-hitting outfield market got even thinner last week with injuries to the Reds’ Spencer Steer and Giants’ Casey Schmitt.

So, if the Orioles try to buy and sell simultaneously, maybe they can cash in Ward for a controllable asset.

Either way, Elias says he will be “open-minded.”

And he might not decide on anything until the weekend is over. After all, the deadline isn’t until 6 p.m. Monday.

“We are watching game by game,” Elias said. “This has turned out to be kind of a razor-wire situation going into this deadline, 2½ out, three games below .500. I think both of those are really disappointing, not particularly what we hope to be.

“But we still have a shot — a good shot — in the American League. I mean, we are going to be watching the results of tonight’s game, tomorrow’s game, but it’s pretty important at this point that we have an idea of what we’re doing. We do have a shot.

“We do care about making the playoffs in 2026.”

The Phillies are exploring other righty-hitting outfield options, including the Angels’ Jo Adell, the Royals’ Lane Thomas, and the Giants’ Heliot Ramos. Thomas, in particular, would be more of a platoon option.

Ward undoubtedly would be at the head of the class, if the Orioles decide to move him.

Rincones returns

When the Phillies called up lefty-hitting outfielder Gabriel Rincones Jr. on June 12, they intended to start him against all right-handed pitchers.

Until this week.

Rincones, stuck in a 2-for-25 tailspin and batting .171 with a .500 OPS overall, wasn’t in the lineup Tuesday and Wednesday in Miami, even though the Phillies faced righty starters. He returned against Orioles righty Brandon Young.

“I just think, if he’s not in there, then he shouldn’t be here,” Mattingly said. “Gave him a couple of days to kind of reset, work on stuff, and hopefully we get a better version.”

Maybe it comes in the form of a trade, if the Phillies can upgrade Rincones’ spot in the outfield.

“It’s that side of the arm [right-handers] that he’s here for,” Mattingly said. “We’ve got to continue to find out. If we find out that it’s not working, then we have to make a change.”

Extra bases

Kyle Schwarber returned to the lineup after sitting out back-to-back games with a gastrointestinal issue. “He’s feeling better,” Mattingly said. … The Phillies were pleased with Zack Wheeler‘s between-starts bullpen session. Wheeler, who is scheduled to start Sunday, exhibited diminished fastball velocity in his previous start in Miami. “It was never a health[-related] thing,” Mattingly said. … An error charged to Trea Turner last Friday night was changed to a hit, MLB announced. Turner still leads the majors with 18 errors. … Cristopher Sánchez (13-4, 2.73 ERA) is scheduled to start Saturday night against Orioles righty Shane Baz (4-9, 3.98).

When production started for My Father, Dick Allen, it was supposed to be a one-hour documentary on the former Phillies star. Four years later, it’s a five-part series, featuring interviews with sportswriters, Allen’s loved ones, and former coaches and players.

The cast is loaded with Hall of Famers, including Mike Schmidt, Goose Gossage, and Andre Dawson. For co-executive producer Sharon Pannozzo, the biggest surprise was seeing just how enthusiastic everyone they asked was to participate.

“Not one person batted an eye and said, ‘Well, I can’t do that. You know, I don’t have time’. Everybody made time,” she said.

Over the past few months, the documentary’s production team has put on screening events across the U.S., as they look to find a partner to license the series. On Thursday night, they stopped in Philadelphia, where Allen played nine of his 15 seasons. Fans were given the chance to see the third episode of the series, which focuses on Allen’s first stint with the Phillies from 1963-69. Following the screening was a panel moderated by The Inquirer’s Matt Breen. The participants included director Andy Billman, graphic designer Todd Radom, Allen superfan and co-producer Andy Wooley, and Allen’s son, Richard Jr.

“Being here is like being at home,” said Allen Jr., known affectionately by his dad as Doobie. “I’ve grown up seeing that Phillies P and the Phillies logo my entire life.”

Allen Jr. also serves as a producer for the series. Well before filming even started, one of his greatest passions in life was preserving his father’s legacy. For decades, Allen Jr. advocated for his father’s induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Allen died in 2020 at 78.

Allen, who hit 351 career home runs, fell off the ballot in 1997 but was brought up for consideration by the Veterans Committee in 2014. He fell short by just one vote. Allen was brought up again in 2021 but also came up short. Last summer, he finally got into Cooperstown after 20 attempts, receiving 13 of 16 votes from the Classic Era Committee.

“You can work on a film in the film business for years sometimes, and then all of a sudden it comes together,” said Pannozzo. “We would’ve told the story whether Dick got into the Hall of Fame last year or not … but we had a good ending.”

When Allen was inducted last summer, Pannozzo and Allen Jr. were given a tour of the Hall of Fame storage vault. The artifact that stuck with Allen the most was a questionnaire his father had filled out at 18 years old, right after he started playing for the Class D Elmira Pioneers. Allen was deeply moved by that piece of paper.

“My whole life, [baseball was] all he talked about, and I thought, OK, OK, OK, and then I get there, and it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, he really wasn’t lying,’” Allen Jr. said.

Another meaningful experience for Doobie was visiting Little Rock, Ark., where his father had played for the triple-A Travelers in 1963. It was that year that the Phillies moved their affiliate from Buffalo to the South. Allen had previously never been to the South and begged the organization to assign him elsewhere, but he didn’t have a choice.

Allen became the first professional Black baseball player in the city of Little Rock, and it was a brutal year for him. Fans shouted slurs his way at the ballpark, in the parking lot, and throughout the city. Little Rock was also segregated, meaning that Allen was isolated from his teammates except when at the ballpark. He refused to return to the city with any of his kids.

But the documentary dedicated a whole episode to the horrors Allen faced during his time in Arkansas. When Allen Jr. explored the city for the first time, however, he wasn’t doing it alone. Hall of Fame pitcher Ferguson Jenkins, who also played for the Travelers, volunteered to go through the city with Doobie. Jenkins was very close friends with Allen and overlapped in Little Rock with him briefly in 1963.

“[He] pretty much substituted for my father, going to the high school, you know, and Little Rock … that would be my favorite part,” Allen Jr. said.

At this point, the team does not have a deal lined up with a distributor for the film. But they know how important it is to be able to tell the story of Dick Allen to a younger generation of fans who did not see him play.

“This is a great story that nobody’s told,” said Pannozzo. “Now we have to sell our project.”

Former Phillies catching prospect Logan O’Hoppe was traded by the Los Angeles Angels to the Texas Rangers on Wednesday along with reliever Chase Silseth for third base prospect Angel Arredondo.

The Angels acquired O’Hoppe, 26, from the Phillies in exchange for outfielder Brandon Marsh just before the 2022 trade deadline. At the time, O’Hoppe was the Phillies’ fifth-ranked organizational prospect. Marsh was named a starter in his first All-Star Game appearance earlier this month.

O’Hoppe had his best season with Los Angeles in 2024, when he hit 20 home runs and had a career-high 2.7 wins above replacement. He is batting .209 with a .565 OPS in 256 plate appearances this season.

Out of the 20 catchers with 250 plate appearances, O’Hoppe ranks 18th in on-base percentage, 19th in batting average, and tied for last in home runs. Texas plans to option him to triple A, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Silseth, 26, was an 11th-round pick by the Angels in 2021 and is having a breakout season. He led the Angels with 47 appearances and had a 2.72 ERA.

Arredondo is a 19-year-old third baseman who has spent all of 2026 with single-A Hickory. He is slashing .247/.372/.397 in 361 plate appearances. Arredondo wasn’t ranked among Texas’s top 30 prospects, per MLB.com, although pipeline rankings have not been updated since the start of the season.