Category: Sports

Trea Turner pulled his hands in, turned on the hanging sweeper from Paul Skenes, and lifted it into the left-field seats. It was July 1, the third game in a row that he got two hits and homered.

His numbers at day’s end: .239/.287/.368.

“They’re not going to look good,” Turner said then of his batting average and on-base and slugging percentages, “probably no matter what I do, for a while.”

Ten weeks later, it’s evident the Phillies’ $300 million shortstop’s stat line will never look good.

At least not this season.

In baseball, nothing brings more comfort to struggling superstars than their track record. The season is so long, and failure is so common, that sometimes it’s all they have. Maybe that’s why the numbers are printed on the back of bubble-gum cards, as a reminder.

And even if the path is filled with potholes, the best players usually reach their standards. In Turner’s case, a .291 average and .812 OPS since he got to the majors 11 years ago with the Nationals. He’s a three-time All-Star, a two-time batting champion, and twice a fifth-place MVP finisher, including last year. Only Freddie Freeman has more hits in the 2020s.

Occasionally, though, the slumps get too deep and last too long and a season is unsalvageable. For Turner, a .241 average and .681 OPS through Thursday qualify as career worsts. Factor in defense — he led all players with 20 errors — and he was valued at only 1.1 wins above replacement, tied for 113th among 143 players with a minimum of 450 plate appearances.

Turner, 33, knows all this. Maybe too well. Intelligent and self-aware, he’s prone to overthinking. And while he believed earlier in the season that he could boost his production to its typical level, he also realized weeks ago that he was running out of time.

Yet that doesn’t mean that his season is lost, because the Phillies are closing in on the postseason for the fifth consecutive year. Entering the weekend, they were one game ahead of the Cubs for the top NL wild card and still within sight of the Braves for the NL East crown.

And for Turner, the playoffs represent an opportunity to redeem a substandard regular season.

“Nobody’s going to remember if he had a bad April, a good May, a bad June if we play well down the stretch,” said interim manager Don Mattingly, who has stuck with Turner in the No. 2 spot in the order. “Nobody ever remembers anything besides that. I think you see guys like [Turner] who have been around long enough, they know they don’t stop trying to get better and feel right.”

So, Turner buries his head in an iPad to analyze video from each at-bat. He swings in the cage with hitting coach Kevin Long before and after batting practice, with grounders from infield coach Bobby Dickerson in between.

“If you get to know Trea a little bit, he does think a lot and he puts a lot of pressure on himself,” Dickerson said. “He wants answers scientifically a lot of times, and he starts to search for that more than actually playing the game, which is what he does well. When he lets his skills show up on the field, plays aggressively, we get a better version of him. And we’ve seen it.”

Turner’s hard-hit rate, defined as pitches that exit his bat at 95 mph or more, was 39.7% entering the weekend, down from 42.1% last season. He also swung at a higher rate of pitches out of the strike zone (34.8%, up from 31.2% last year) and was more susceptible to curveballs and sliders (.207 average, down from .250).

But Turner also had hit into some rotten luck, including a .281 average on balls in play (compared to .350 last season). He was hitting .427 on balls that had an exit velocity of 95 mph or more; league average was .488.

Turner’s search for answers led to a meeting with Ichiro Suzuki when the Phillies played in Seattle in late August. And he peppered the Hall of Famer with questions. How do you hit the ball the other way? What’s your approach in certain situations? If you’re doing this wrong, what would you do?

“I didn’t realize but kind of now looking at it, we’re pretty similar in our games in the sense that he didn’t walk a lot, he wanted to hit, hit the ball all over the field, could hit it out of the park sometimes,” Turner said. “Talking with him and his mindset and what he physically does, a lot of it kind of applied to me in my game. So, it was kind of nice.”

Maybe it helped. Because entering the weekend, Turner had 14 hits, including five doubles and two homers, in 13 games since the series in Seattle. He went deep in back-to-back games this week against the Astros and drove the ball the other way to right field for two hits Wednesday night.

It’s too late to rescue Turner’s season statistically. But after months of wondering whether any trace of a hot streak represented a return to normalcy, maybe it’s a building block for October.

“He’s handled it very well for the caliber of the player he is,” Kyle Schwarber said. “You see a guy that has had so much success in the big leagues, and he might not be getting the results. But it’s really refreshing to see a guy at his age, how much he’s been through in this game, you see him keep grinding. You can’t say enough about him.”

It’s not like Turner is alone. Across the sport, other underachievers may get a chance for an October rewrite. Call them the Second Chance All-Stars, players who can erase six frustrating months with a few strong weeks.

1. Kyle Tucker, Dodgers: Even after coming within a triple of hitting for the cycle Wednesday, he entered the weekend batting .225 with a .684 OPS, full-season career worsts in his first year in Los Angeles — all for the low, low average annual salary of $60 million. The four-time All-Star outfielder has been especially putrid at home: .187, four homers, .572 OPS. “You’ve just got to keep going,” he told reporters. “Try and at least pick out the positives and just try to ride with that.” Something tells us Dodgers fans would forgive if Tucker repeats his two-homer Game 1 of the 2022 World Series for the Astros.

2. Austin Riley, Braves: The two-time All-Star third baseman dragged a .223 average and .658 OPS into the weekend against the Phillies, the nadir in a three-year decline since Atlanta locked him up to a 10-year, $212 million extension, the largest contract in franchise history. He would be wise, then, to take the advice of infield coach Ron Washington. “[He’s] always saying, ‘Say, hey, no one cares what you did yesterday. It’s about today. Close the yearbook,’” Riley told The Athletic in June. A few big October hits would make it easier. A potential start: Riley beat the Phillies last Sunday with a go-ahead triple in the ninth inning off Jhoan Duran.

3. Christian Yelich, Brewers: The former MVP stands out on a roster that lacks star power. But he has been barely above replacement level, with a .241 average, .712 OPS, and 0.4 WAR entering the weekend. It’s little wonder that manager Pat Murphy told reporters that he walked in on Yelich taking swings in the batting cage at 1 a.m. after a recent game. “You can say, ‘That’s not enough. He’s getting old.’ No, he’s not,” Murphy said of the 34-year-old face of the franchise. “He’s got another gear.” Maybe it will resurface in the postseason.

4. Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Blue Jays: It’s up there with any of baseball’s 2026 unsolved mysteries. How can it be possible midway through September, after 132 games, that the $500 million masher still hasn’t hit a homer at home this season? Woe, Canada. Guerrero went into the weekend slugging .352, 128th among 139 hitters who qualified for the batting title. He had only eight homers after averaging 31 over the previous five seasons. But the Jays were only one game out of a wild card in the mediocrity-riddled American League. Imagine if they get in and he finds the power switch.

And then there’s Turner, who can be the Phillies’ biggest difference-maker in October.

“The games that Trea gets going, it’s like a different dynamic with our offense,” Mattingly said. “We’re seeing him hopefully find a groove of hitting the ball hard for a number of games here in a row. It’d be huge for us.”

ATLANTA — Bryce Harper was off and running from second.

Alec Bohm had hit a grounder right to Braves shortstop Mauricio Dubón, but by the time Harper realized his mistake, it was too late. He was frozen between second and third, and Dubón had him dead to rights.

Harper was tagged out for the second out in the top of the ninth, and the Phillies’ best chance at an insurance run went up in smoke. When the Braves tied the game in the ninth, and again in the 10th, before finally walking off the Phillies, 6-5, in the 11th, the blunder cast an even longer shadow.

“Not ideal situation,” Harper said. “Yeah, need to be better.”

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As Friday’s game marched into extra innings, the Phillies were unable to build a lead of more than one run. And the Braves kept punching back, before finally breaking through with an RBI double from Drake Baldwin to take the series opener in Atlanta.

The bad news for the Phillies didn’t end there. Jesús Luzardo, who almost single-handedly beat the Braves in his first career shutout last week, was scratched from his scheduled Saturday start because of shoulder stiffness.

Now, the Phillies will follow up Friday’s 11-inning game, which required five relief arms, with a bullpen game on Saturday.

Luzardo started feeling the stiffness after his 109-pitch shutout of the Braves on Sept. 4. The Phillies initially hoped he would be able to make his start but now opting fort caution. Interim manager Don Mattingly said Luzardo does not currently require time on the injured list.

“We feel like it’s safer to be careful with him and don’t want this to linger,” Mattingly said. “So it’s one of the things we want to try to take care of and just go from there.”

Friday’s loss stung all the more because the Phillies had managed to put up three runs on Braves ace Chris Sale. The second-inning rally, capped by a bases-clearing double by Derek Hill, had been their only sustained offense against him, but it was starting to look like it was all they needed.

Aaron Nola worked his way around heavy traffic for 6⅓ innings, keeping the damage to a pair of solo home runs. José Alvarado relieved him and delivered two big strikeouts of Baldwin and Ronald Acuña Jr. Rookie Alex McFarlane turned in a scoreless eighth in a big spot.

With the Phillies clinging to a 3-2 lead in the ninth, Harper’s mistake was latest in a long line of baserunning blunders the Phillies have committed in this recent stretch. And this particular play between second and third seems to be the Phillies’ kryptonite.

Alec Bohm made an identical mistake to Harper on Thursday against the Astros. Brandon Marsh did the same two weeks ago in Anaheim, Calif., and earlier this week also was doubled off at second base after misreading a liner to shortstop.

“A little bit contagious,” Mattingly said. “I don’t understand it really. But, again, we’ll just keep talking about it and working through it.”

With Jhoan Duran unavailable after pitching back-to-back days, Jonathan Bowlan had the ninth with a one-run lead. He allowed back-to-back singles on his slider, and it didn’t help that Hill bobbled Sean Murphy’s hit to center field, allowing Mike Yastrzemski to tie the game at 4.

“Two ground balls. I mean, it’s tough, but that’s just the game,” Bowlan said. “The ground balls, they found holes, and it’s just part of it. And all you can do is take it a pitch at a time.”

After emerging earlier this season as one of the Phillies’ go-to setup arms, Bowlan has struggled in September. He has allowed a run in each of his last four appearances.

With 55 innings under his belt now, he’s already surpassed his career-high in the majors, though Bowlan said he feels like he’s holding up physically.

“I thought ball was coming out good,” Mattingly said. “Couple base hits up the middle, both sides of the bag. Yeah, we just got to keep going. He’s going through it, like hitters do or pitchers do. It’s kind of the same for me. So just got to keep working through it, and get where we got to go.”

Justin Crawford, who had been stuck on the bench for nine innings and a 47-minute rain delay before that, kept the Phillies’ hopes alive with an RBI single to lead off the 10th. But it was still not enough, as the Braves tied things back up on a sacrifice fly.

Luis Arraez’s RBI single temporarily put the Phillies back in front, 6-5, in the top of the 11th. But Ha-Seong Kim tied the game against Brooks Raley with a single before Baldwin’s double won it.

“He’s a guy that we trust that he’s not going to give in,” Mattingly said of Raley. “I think [Kim] hit a changeup, just kind of pulled it to him. Yeah, so all of our guys have been struggling a little bit out there. But we’ll get through it.”

As the Phillies left Truist Park in the early hours of Saturday morning, their list of concerns was long, and only growing. At the top is Luzardo’s health and whether some extra rest will be enough to have the lefty back to form atop the rotation as the postseason approaches.

But the Phillies’ baserunning and bullpen are not far behind.

“Definitely thought we had a chance to win that game, all around,” Harper said.

ATLANTA — Four days after they last saw each other, the Phillies and Braves have come face to face yet again.

Because of a scheduling quirk, the regular season matchups between the National League East rivals this year have been condensed within two weeks in April and 10 days in September.

Interim manager Don Mattingly, for one, doesn’t mind it.

“I kind of like the back-to-backs, especially planning-wise. You just saw them for four games. You get a couple days off, and you go again,” he said. “So I kind of like it. It’s always better if you’re playing good. The first time we saw them, we weren’t playing good. They were playing really good. Same with the Cubs. Kind of caught them on fire. We were kind of struggling, right in the same little period of time.”

The Phillies entered Friday’s series opener trailing Atlanta by four games for the division lead — exactly where they were at the start of the previous series, which they split. Taking at least two of three games this weekend at Truist Park is essential for the Phillies to remain in contention for the NL East.

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Because of the scheduling, the Phillies just saw all three Braves pitchers planned to start this series: Chris Sale, Tyler Mahle, and Grant Holmes. On the other hand, the Braves just faced Friday starter Aaron Nola and Saturday starter Jesús Luzardo, who shut them out in his last outing. They missed Andrew Painter, who will take the ball on Sunday.

There are advantages and drawbacks for both pitchers and hitters seeing each other in quick succession.

“It kind of works both ways,” Mattingly said. “It’s like the cat and mouse game goes on and on. Like, how you pitched them last time, how did you get them out? Did you get them out? Did they hit you? What do you feel like they’re looking for? As a hitter, did he get me out? Is he going to go back there? It’s just back and forth.”

Marsh and Marchán OK

As expected, neither Brandon Marsh nor catcher Rafael Marchán were in the Phillies’ lineup Friday against Sale, but both of them are healthy after sustaining some bruises in Thursday’s day game.

Marsh exited the series finale against the Astros with a bruised foot after fouling a ball off it in the bottom of the eighth inning. Marchán bunted a ball off his helmet in the sixth inning, though he remained in the game.

With lefty Sale on the mound for Atlanta, the Phillies stacked right-handers in Friday’s lineup. Bryan De La Cruz started in left field and Derek Hill started in center, while Edmundo Sosa took over for Bryson Stott at third.

J.T. Realmuto was back behind the plate after a planned day off Thursday.

Keller stops by

Brad Keller still has a ways to go in his recovery and rehab from the Tommy John surgery he underwent on July 29 to repair a torn UCL. But he has a locker in the visitor’s clubhouse in Atlanta this week and was there Friday catching up with his teammates.

Keller, who is based in Georgia, is taking the opportunity to be back around the team for the three games this series. Before his injury, he was a key part of the bullpen mix and signed a two-year, $22 million deal to be the Phillies’ setup man this offseason. Since Keller’s season ended, Jonathan Bowlan often has filled that role, but has struggled lately with a 6.23 ERA in four appearances in September.

Outfielder Adolis García, who suffered a season-ending lat tear in June, was also back around the team during their last homestand.

“It’s good to see guys that were a big part of what we were doing and had the injury, for him to come around. It’s kind of like [García],” Mattingly said. “It was the same way. To have those guys around, it feels good. Because sometimes I think when you’re on that, where you’re gone for a little bit of time, you feel like you’re not part of it anymore, and it’s just not a great feeling. So it’s good to have those guys come back around.”

Extra bases

Luzardo (14-5, 2.87 ERA) is scheduled to start opposite Braves right-hander Mahle (5-10, 4.05 ERA) on Saturday. In his last start, he limited Atlanta to two hits in his first career shutout.