Citizens Bank Park was buzzing this past week. After a tumultuous stretch where they dropped six straight series, the Phillies have started to right the ship. But it was a frustrating run for fans of the Phillies and the team, alike.
After having the best record in baseball back by 3.5 games on July 13, and being the only team with 60+ wins, Philadelphia went 7-17 over the next month. Despite that, they are still in the conversation for tops of the league, but they allowed several National League and American League foes to join them. Over that stretch, not much seemed to go right. They lost series to the Oakland Athletics and Pittsburgh Pirates, starting the fans’ frustration before they fell to two top-tier AL opponents – including a sweep at the hands of the New York Yankees.
Discouragement could be heard over the airways as the callers into the local sports radio shows began to question or challenge everyone up and down the roster. But Phillies fans weren’t the only ones beginning to feel the mounting frustration – Kyle Schwarber spoke with reporters after an August 16 loss to the Miami Marlins about that (Quote courtesy of @NBCSPhilly on X) and mentioned frustrated, but confident they would turn it around together:
“We’ve assembled a really good team, and we’ve assembled really a bunch of good dudes too. That’s why for us, like we said – there’s frustration – and you’re gonna see us really come together right, and we’re gonna figure this thing out and we got it. I promise you we’ll be better for it at the end.
Good players can go through rough patches, and when it happens to everyone at once, it can turn into a disheartening few weeks. The hope is that you don’t allow it to extend to a crippling level. Throughout those four weeks, the Phillies manager Rob Thomson kept faith in his ball club. He often spoke with the media about how they have a great group of guys, and how they’ve been there before – but he was also honest about the team’s performance.
He repeatedly spoke about how guys might be “pressing” or “trying to do too much.” You can see that guys might be struggling when you look at results, but what does it mean when a player is “pressing?” You can look at the results and make an assumption:
However, I wanted to know what Thomson means – what is the manager and baseball lifer seeing from his team that tells him they are “pressing”, and it’s not something else? So I asked him just that prior to the team’s game on Thursday, August 15:
“(When they) Chase, getting out of the zone, not making good decisions, and…pulling ground balls.”
Getting out of the zone is an easy way for fans to view what pressing might look like when watching at home. One thing I started to take notice of was a trend where the normally high-powered offense was missing on pitches right down the middle of the plate.
Per Statcast pitch location when the pitch is thrown right down the middle, the Phillies are the No. 7 ranked team in the majors with a .657 slugging percentage. From July 13 through August 3? Their slugging plummeted to .448 – good for No. 29 of 30 teams. That’s a free fall of over .200 points! Just two teams in the majors have a SLG% that low since, and .448 is lower than any team has on the season – on the pitches that you’d be expected to do damage with.
The Phillies are coming around
Things started to look better after the Phillies won a game in Seattle before winning their series against the Dodgers, taking the season series from their main competition for the top seed in the National League. Several hitters began to turn the corner, but were they all out of the woods?
Bryce Harper snapped a 1-for-34 streak, by tallying a hit in 10 of his next 12 games, including six multi-hit contests over that stretch. Kyle Schwarber has been en fuego since late July. From the 26th to today, he’s seen his numbers jump across the board, and he’s climbed up the league-wide rankings in home runs and OPS.
- His OPS has jumped over 40 points
- Jumped from T-20th to T-11th in HRs
- Gone from 43rd to 18th in OPS
- .268/.390/.580 over that stretch
There are a few other bright spots – Johan Rojas is hitting .300 since the break, and Bryson Stott has been particularly great at home in that stretch as well – slashing .375/.419/.550 over 12 games. Despite this, the team’s offense still felt like something was missing.
Over the last two weeks, however, things have really ramped up – and just in time. Since their win against the Marlins back on July 14, the Phillies have won eight of twelve and they are back to doing damage with the pitches they need to – looking at pitches that are dead center over since that victory over Miami, Philadelphia is hitting .430 with a slugging percentage of .774 which ranks fifth in the majors over the past two weeks. That stretch includes tough teams in the Braves, Royals, and Astros. They seem to have found a way to correct some of their struggles.
Philadelphia’s pitching situation seems to get a bit more complicated each day, but one thing is for sure – the Phillies offense seems like they are returning to the early-season form they had that catapulted them to the top of the league.
The challenge, as always, is if the Phillies can stay there.
Photo Credit: Eric Hartline-USA TODAY Sports
