The Phillies’ Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Weekend

👋 Good morning.

Vamos!

Since today will mostly be about the baseball team that we are all annoyed at, I would like to first say that I thoroughly enjoyed The Tennis this weekend. On Saturday, Coco Gauff beats Sabalenka in three sets, great match. And then the Sinner-Alcaraz match on Sunday was epic stuff. The shot-making from both of those guys was out of this world.

As you can tell, we have a new design for the newsletter that I am very excited about. OK, about that struggling baseball team...

PNC Park. House of horrors.

You just cannot get swept by the Pittsburgh Pirates, whose ownership is not even trying to win baseball games. But for the Phillies, that sweep just very much happened. They have now lost a staggering nine of ten games, and are firmly in the doghouse locally.

We are speed running the "Shake things up!" suggestions that everyone makes when things go terrible for the local baseball team...

I do not know if any of these things will actually make a difference, but I certainly get the frustration. A baseball season will always have peaks and valleys, but a 1-9 stretch is pretty brutal for a team with real expectations. It is one that I did not think this Phillies team was capable of. The floor should be higher than this.

And yeah, this run of successful Phillies baseball started when the organization made what some at the time viewed as a "Shake things up!" type of move in firing Joe Girardi. It probably was more than that with the benefit of hindsight, but still.

I am becoming exceedingly frustrated by the eight position players that the Phillies run out every day. The only way that this slump ends is if they show a pulse. They scored six runs over three games this weekend!

Think about what is happening on the rest of this team. The bullpen is the weakest spot, and the starting rotation is leaking a little bit of oil with Jesús Luzardo and Aaron Nola. Not a ton, mind you, the Phils still got strong starts from Ranger Suárez and Cristopher Sánchez this past weekend and wasted them. And now Bryce Harper is out for 10 days with the reoccurrence of a wrist injury that sounds pretty tricky.

So, everyone not named Kyle Schwarber (who is slumping for the first time this year) in that lineup, let's go. This is not close to good enough.

Let's remove the garbage-time five-spot the Phillies put up in the ninth inning on 5/31 against Milwaukee, when they were down 17-2. You take those meaningless runs away, and the Phillies have scored 2.5 runs per game over their last ten. I keep looking at "runs per game" on the season and am surprised to see the Phils in the Top-10. Here is what the lineup looks like...

Not only that, this group also cannot field. Phillies' opponents have the second-highest BABIP (batting average on balls in play) in baseball. Is some of that maybe just bad luck? Sure, and I will not attribute all of it to just one thing. But the Phillies starters are dominant, and opponents are not barreling balls consistently against them. Yet they fall for hits, and I do think the defense is a big culprit here. We saw bad outfield defense all weekend in Western PA.

After Harper was put on the IL, Otto Kemp finally got called up this weekend. Seems like he will play third base, while Alec Bohm moves over to first. Kemp has just a walk to show for his first six at-bats, but hey, might as well see what the kid has for the next few weeks. If Kemp has something, anything, he has to stay.

Baseball seasons are long, and the Phillies can certainly turn things around. Hey, Zack Wheeler is on the bump tonight. But despite their decent record, it is hard to trust this team right now. Too many legitimate holes on this roster that Dave Dombrowski put together.

Maxim Shabanov: We are wading back into loosely translated reports from Russia that may or may not mean anything. But it does seem like the Flyers at least are legitimately in the mix for Russian winger Maxim Shabanov, who is the top European free agent on the market.

Shabanov is on the smaller side, but as you can see above, he is a wizard with the puck. ​From our site​:

Jay Wright, happily retired: I would like to congratulate Jay Wright, because I think people only now will finally believe him. Whenever the Sixers, Lakers, North Carolina or whatever big-time coaching job has opened up, Wright's name normally gets thrown into the ring from somewhere else. And Wright calmly says the same thing every time: "I am enjoying retirement and being on television."

The 'Nova Knicks were the last chance. If he was going to get back into coaching, it would have to be with Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart and Mikal Bridges, right? So many people brought up the possibility of Wright replacing Tom Thibodeau. And it sure seems like Leon Rose tried his best. ​From The New York Post​:

As it turns out, Jay Wright was not lying when saying that he loves not being a basketball coach. Good for him. The Knicks will have to turn elsewhere.

Zack Wheeler is back, as the Phils take on the Cubs (6:45 p.m., NBC Sports Philly and NBC10). It was the Cubbies who the Phillies got on track against after their previous difficult stretch this season. Hopefully that happens again. And the Stanley Cup moves to Florida after two overtime games in Edmonton.Your tentative Monday schedule at ​PHLY​:

Let's make it a good one.

Rich Hofmann

Daily Newsletter Editor

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