ATLANTA — You can blame the manager for his handling of the pitching staff. You can blame the front office for forcing him to handle a grenade. I suppose you can blame the pitchers themselves: Jhoan Duran for giving up the decisive three-run home run in Game 1, Aaron Nola for doing the same in Game 3.
But before we blame anybody for the way the Phillies’ season ended, a 6-2 loss in a decisive Game 3 at Truist Field on Thursday night, let’s at least take a moment to acknowledge what they accomplished.
A baseball season is a maddening, fluky, grind of a thing. Qualifying for the playoffs in five straight seasons is an extraordinarily difficult task. The Phillies are one of only nine franchises in major league history who have ever done it. Their current streak is the second-longest active one in the majors, behind only the Dodgers (14). That’s not apologetics. It’s reality.
Just ask the Braves, who were down to their last four outs in Game 1 when Austin Riley homered off Duran. Or, heck, ask the Dodgers. Los Angeles made the playoffs seven straight times without winning a World Series before finally breaking through in 2020. That initial stretch included three National League Division Series losses. They’ll be favored against the Braves in this year’s NLDS, which starts Saturday. They know how little it means.
“It’s just as frustrating as last year, and the year before that,” said Kyle Schwarber, who had two of the Phillies’ six hits against a Braves team that used six pitchers, none for more than 10 outs. “We have to keep finding ourselves in position, first off, to be in this position. Because it’s never going to be a guarantee that you’re in a postseason. You have to keep fighting to be in those spots and when you are in the postseason, keep trying to find a way to win a game.”
None of this is meant to serve as consolation. Nor does it nullify the litany of criticisms one can and should direct at these Phillies. As difficult as it is to make five straight postseasons, it is nearly as difficult to lose four straight postseason series on luck alone. There are clearly some structural issues here.
- In their last nine postseason games, the Phillies have scored a total of 10 runs in the first six innings. About a third of those runs came in one inning, when they scored three off Shohei Ohtani in Game 1 of last year’s NLDS loss to the Dodgers.
- In those same nine postseason games, the Phillies have allowed a remarkable 19 runs in the seventh inning or later.
Just as obvious as these KPIs are their underlying causes. The Phillies are a top-heavy team in both phases of the game. Dave Dombrowski’s biggest failure over the last three-plus years has been his inability to address either.
The last time the Phillies won a playoff game where neither Bryce Harper nor Kyle Schwarber homered was Game 4 of the 2023 NLDS. In fact, the duo has combined for at least two home runs in five of the six wins since. It is neither sustainable nor reasonable to place that much responsibility on two members of a nine-man lineup.
Same goes for the pitching staff, which has leaned so heavily on its key members that you can’t help but wonder about the cumulative effects.
In Game 3, 36-year-old Zack Wheeler was out there throwing 68 pitches on three days rest. This was two days after Jesús Luzardo threw 77 pitches in his first start off a three-week stint on the injured list. Which was the same day Duran threw 27 pitches in the seventh and eighth innings and wasn’t heard from again.
You can second guess some of what interim manager Don Mattingly did with his pitching staff against the Braves. Bringing Duran into Game 1 when he did, allowing him to throw as many pitches as he did, starting Nola in Game 3. None of these decisions looked much different from the ones the previous guy would have made. This is how it looks when a manager feels like he does not have enough options.
“I don’t think it’s the time right now to try to evaluate why or whatever happened, what’s good, what’s bad,” Mattingly said after the loss. “It’s like any situation. You look at your club, you evaluate it, what went wrong, what went right, what’s the positive, what’s the negative, how do you move forward.
“But again, that’s not my place to talk about that. I think that’s the organization’s place. It’s Dave’s spot to — how they build the club. I’m sure those are things they’ll be thinking about over the winter.”
Mattingly is right to defer to his boss. The onus is clearly on Dombrowski, obviously. Credit him for drafting Alex McFarlane in the fourth round in 2022. The rookie setup man is the kind of arm the Phillies needed to find to have any hope at solving their longest running issue. Of course, we once said the same of Orion Kerkering.
You can’t fault Dombrowski’s effort. He’s taken plenty of swings. The whiff rate is the issue. Neither of the two relievers he acquired at the trade deadline was on the playoff roster: Caleb Kilian due to injury, Brooks Raley due to ineffectiveness. Same goes for Dombrowski’s biggest offseason acquisition. Setup man Brad Keller went down in early July with an elbow injury that will likely sideline him through next season. Kerkering finished the season in triple A, capping a steady downward slide from his promising debut in late 2023. Dombrowski’s best move of the year was acquiring righty Jonathan Bowlan from the Royals for lefty Matt Strahm. But Bowlan, too, spent most of the series on ice, appearing only after the Braves had taken a 5-0 lead in Game 3.
The issues with the lineup will be even more difficult to solve. The Phillies still haven’t found a replacement for Rhys Hoskins behind Schwarber and Harper. Whit Merrifield, Austin Hays, Adolis García, none even managed to offset the decline and fall of Nick Castellanos.
These aren’t just nitpicks. These are issues that will almost certainly need to be solved before the Phillies are capable of winning three or four straight playoff series, let alone one. And, really, they transcend whatever transaction-level pass-fail grades you assign to Dombrowski’s moves. The Phillies’ structural issues extend to their payroll. For the most part, their big-money guys performed about as well as can be expected, at least when grading against typical aging curves (i.e. in the case of J.T. Realmuto and Nola).
The one significant exception is shortstop Trea Turner, who has seven years and roughly $190 million remaining on his contract and is coming off a 33-year-old season in which he posted a career-low .675 OPS. He went 1-for-11 with no walks in three games against the Braves. Turner is 8-for-55 in his last 14 playoff games dating back to Game 5 of the 2023 NLCS.
“I think it starts with me,” Turner said of the offense’s struggles. “I take a lot of responsibility for it.”
Even with some improvement from Turner, Dombrowski will need to take a careful look at every level of his organization and consider how to better balance this team beyond spinning the roulette-wheel of mid-level free agents and living trade deadline to trade deadline. He will need to explore the offseason trade market. He will need to come up with an accurate assessment of top hitting prospect Aidan Miller’s short- and long-term future after he missed most of the year with a back injury. He may need to consider whether Brandon Marsh can be swapped for a better lineup fit as the outfielder heads into his walk year.
These are difficult decisions. But they are the reason Dombrowski’s job exists.
The issue with the Phillies is not their heart, or their brains, and it certainly isn’t their grit. It isn’t their age, or their two best hitters. They came back from a disastrous start that earned their beloved manager a pink slip. They came back from a disastrous seventh inning in Game 2, one day after a victory slipped away from them late. Schwarber and Harper were as good a tandem as any in the league, all the way through this loss to the Braves.
The hardest general managin’ is taking a roster from good to great. Here we are, seeing it once again.
