ATLANTA — If you weren’t careful you’d have gotten blood on your shoes when Trea Turner fell on his sword.
Turner knows exactly why the Phillies don’t score as much as they should. He looks that reason in the eye every morning.
“Me,” he said. “I mean, it’s pretty simple.”
Turner spoke in front of his locker in the visiting clubhouse at Truist Park after a Game 3 wild-card loss to the Braves crushed the Phillies’ playoff hopes, the fourth consecutive year in which a billion-dollar lineup produced dime-store offense and, as a result, for the third consecutive season, it exited the postseason in the first series in which it played.
Turner’s dead wood isn’t the only issue on this club. It lost crucial deadline addition Luis Arraez, a .300 hitter, to injury last week. Its bullpen, flawed even when whole, was ravaged by injury as well. It is a poor defensive team with subpar speed that often is amplified by bafflingly bad base-running.
Turner isn’t the only hole in the lineup, either. Bryson Stott has been just as bad at times, as has catcher J.T. Realmuto, who went hitless in the 2024 postseason and was 2-for-10 against the Braves.
But both Stott and Realmuto are defensive stars. Turner can be a defensive liability, even though he plays shortstop. But then, that’s a different conversation, and besides, it only reinforces this reality: No money is more poorly spent by the Phillies than the money they’ve spent on Turner. There is no simple solution. Turner is 33, he has an untradeable contract, and he’s locked in for seven more seasons. Hopefully, by the time he’s 40, he will have figured it out.
Dave Dombrowski, the team’s president, gave Turner a $300 million contract in 2023 with a simple, specific job: Get on base in front of Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper so they could drive him in.
Sure, he might hit the odd home run, but Turner has two batting titles, and he’s got speed to burn.
All he’s been burning in the Phillies’ postseasons is John Middleton’s cash.
“You know, when you hit first or second, you get a lot of at-bats, and I kind of get things going,” he said.
He spoke of the design, not the execution.
Because he hasn’t gotten things going. Not in a long time. Not in the playoffs, especially.
After their 6-2 loss Thursday, the Phillies now have three runs or fewer in the first nine innings in 11 of their last 13 playoff games. That encompasses the last two games of the NLCS against the Diamondbacks in 2023, the four NLDS games against the Mets in 2024, the four NLDS games against the Dodgers in 2025, and the three against the Braves this year.
Not coincidentally, they now have lost 10 of those 13 games.
In those 13 games, Turner is 8-for-52. That’s a .154 average.
And that, folks, is the biggest reason why the Phillies can’t score.
Further, lack of scoring is the biggest reason why the Phillies can’t win. Not the bullpen. Not the defense.
The offense.
Period.
Turner’s postseason struggles from last year bled into his regular-season efforts this year. His batting average fell from .304 in 2025, best in the National League, to .242, the worst of his 13 full seasons — the worst by 24 points. The Phillies’ team average dipped from No. 2 in the NL in 2025 to No. 12 in 2026. They also scored 65 fewer runs in 2026 than in 2025.
Some of those runs, had they been scored in late September, would have helped the Phillies earn home-field advantage in the wild-card round. The Phillies held the top wild-card spot, but, with five games to play, they hit a four-game slide. They scored one run in three of those games. They were shut out in the fourth.
As such, they needed to win Game 162 in order to ensure the third wild-card slot, and they burned ace Zack Wheeler in that game. That meant Wheeler was not available for Game 1 of the wild-card series against the Braves on Tuesday.
“Having your pitching set up is really important this time of year,” Turner said. “And we didn’t do a good job playing down the stretch to have that happen.”
The Phillies lost that game. They had to use closer Jhoan Duran early, and for too long, and he tired, and they lost.
Turner went 0-for-3 in Game 1. He got picked off, too.
It was a rough visit to Georgia.
Turner finished the wild-card round 1-for-11 despite having the two magnificent sluggers hitting behind him, as they did all season.
“A lot of that’s on me,” Turner said. “I think you know, Kyle and Bryce did a good job.”
Good, maybe. Not great.
Harper was 3-for-13 with a double, a homer, and two RBIs. Schwarber was 4-for-11 with a homer. Their overall postseason production, however, is Ruthian.
To be fair, in his 67 career playoff games, Turner has not been a total bust. He hit .270 in his first 54 playoff games, which included a World Series title run with the Nationals in 2019. In his first 11 playoff games with the Phillies, in 2023, he hit .415 with three homers, five doubles, and 1.224.
He has been a black hole since. Again, he is not alone.
Stott, since Game 6 of the 2023 NLCS against the Diamondbacks, is 8-for-45 (.178) with one extra-base hit and 14 strikeouts.
But then, Stott has made about $10 million since 2023.
Turner has made almost $110 million since 2023.
He makes more than $27.2 million per season. How will he better earn his money in 2027?
Turner has no idea.
“It’s a question. Got a lot of work to do. Go over everything and just figure out, as much as I can. Find answers. See what I did bad,” Turner said. “This year was the biggest question mark for me offensively in a long time. I’ve got to figure that out. So I’m definitely gonna have a lot of work to do there. And I’ll do it.”
Doing the work is one thing.
Getting the hits: That’s something else.
