Analyzing the Phillies’ Downfall and Strategies for a Turnaround

Well that’s not how it was supposed to go. The Phillies came into this season as one of the World Series favorites, having won the pennant in 2022, then reached the NLCS in 2023. They were the best team in the National League for most of the year, and — having won the club’s first NL East title since 2011 — were expected to at least repeat the deep playoff runs of the past two seasons. Ideally, they’d improve on it and go all the way. Instead, they’re out on the first hurdle, having lost 3-1 in the NLDS to — and this might be the most galling part — a hated division rival who sneaked into the playoffs on the final day, then needed a lightning strike of a rally off Devin Williams to eke out a three-game win in the Wild Card series. But over four games, the Mets were comprehensively the better team. If Nick Castellanos hadn’t had his eyes glaze over white and milky as he accessed a higher plane of consciousness in the last four innings of Game 2, this could well have been a sweep. A team this talented and well-resourced would be within its rights to shrug and run it back in 2025. Indeed, that’s what the Phillies did a year ago, when they were nine outs from going up 3-0 in the NLCS, then lost consecutive would-be clinchers at home. Now, having spit the bit twice in as many playoff series, the Phillies are going to have to at least consider changing more than their postgame playlist. It’s rare to see such a fractious local media scene so entirely in agreement, but the consensus is clear: There needs to be “real conversations” or a shakeup or some soul-searching. That consensus falls apart when you start to ask about specifics. So let’s look at what can actually be done. And let’s start with what can’t be done, or shouldn’t be done. As disappointing as the end of this season was, I don’t think anyone can accuse president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski of putting together an uncompetitive team, especially considering how poorly his predecessors fared for a decade. Manager Rob Thomson remains popular and authoritative in the clubhouse, and insofar as I disagreed with certain of his in-game tactics — leaving Aaron Nola in a batter or two too long in Game 3, which allowed the Mets to break the game open, to name one — I’m inclined to cut him some slack after watching the relievers he’s relied on for two straight Octobers go full Mitch Williams with no warning. I’d expect the roster to remain more or less the same in 2025 as well. For starters, you don’t just blow up a 95-win team because of one bad trip to Queens. But the Phillies are kind of in the same boat as the Braves: They’ve locked in their core until kingdom come, which means they should be good for the foreseeable future, but it’s hard to shuffle the roster to make necessary upgrades. The Phillies have $259 million already committed to their 2025 payroll, according to RosterResource, which is the highest number in baseball. Their only major league free agents are all relief pitchers: Jeff Hoffman, Spencer Turnbull (who hasn’t pitched since June), and Carlos Estévez (who only just got here at the trade deadline). Only three more major contributors will be on expiring contracts next season: Kyle Schwarber, J.T. Realmuto, and Ranger Suárez. Everyone else is under team control through at least 2026. So whatever ails the Phillies is not going to be solved by free agent attrition. They’re going to have to be proactive. Even so, most of this team would only leave Philadelphia if abducted by aliens. Bryce Harper got caught trying to do too much in a few key moments, but that only underscored how much the Phillies rely on him. He was 4-for-12 with three extra-base hits and five walks in four games; Harper either scored or drove in five of the Phillies’ 12 runs. If anyone tells you he was the problem, you should re-evaluate with whom you’re spending your time. Schwarber went quiet after his mammoth series-opening home run: 1-for-15 to end the series, including the final out. But you’re going to hear a lot about how the Phillies were too aggressive at the plate, and cutting bait on the team’s most selective hitter is not the way to do that. Especially when said hitter has also contributed 143 home runs between the regular season and playoffs over the past three seasons. And believe it or not, Trea Turner wasn’t the problem either. Not that you could move on from him if you wanted to, just two seasons into an 11-year contract. But after a pretty brutal oh-fer in Game 1, Turner put in a solid series from that point on, reaching base five times across Games 2 and 3. You still want more than singles and walks from a player of his profile, but he’s not on my list of players I’d accuse of looking lost. Turner is a polarizing figure in Philadelphia because of the aforementioned contract, as well as the fact that he started his Phillies tenure in a half-season-long slump. But in 2024, he was almost exactly as advertised. Let’s compare his 2024 numbers to two pivotal seasons in his career: 2019, when he was the third-best position player on a championship team, and 2022, his last season with the Dodgers before the Phillies signed him.

Once you account for the hamstring injury that cost Turner a quarter of the season this year, there was no appreciable drop-off. If he’d played 160 games in 2024 and produced at the same rate, he would’ve been a 5.2 WAR player. Maybe he’s coming to the end of his time as a shortstop, or maybe he should cut back on the pregame Red Bull during the playoffs, but since mid-2023, he’s lived up to his billing. The other area where change is neither advisable nor possible is the rotation, which had three All-Stars this season — Suárez, Cristopher Sánchez, and Zack Wheeler — plus Nola. Those four all pitched well enough to win in this past series; Phillies starters were 0-1 against the Mets, with a 2.53 ERA and 30 strikeouts in 21 1/3 innings. And it’s a good thing all these guys are doing a good job, because the Phillies signed Nola, Sánchez, and Wheeler to multi-year contract extensions in the past 12 months; that trio will make some $68.6 million total next season, which is more than the A’s spent on their entire big league roster this year. Taijuan Walker, who didn’t throw a pitch in the 2023 postseason and was left off the 2024 playoff roster altogether, has two years and $36 million left on his deal. He was a high-volume, league-average starter in 2023, but it feels unnecessarily cruel to recount his 2024 season. I’ll give you some numbers: a 5.5 K-BB%, 7.10 ERA, 6.94 FIP, -1.1 WAR. Anything the Phillies get from Walker going forward is gravy. If he reinvents himself, adds a pitch, changes his windup or his conditioning and unlocks the old Walker, great. The odds of moving off of that $36 million are so remote it might behoove the Phillies to wait and see how he looks next spring; this, for anyone who’s curious, is why they didn’t just cut him during the season. Either way, as much as Walker was a lightning rod during the Phillies’ 33-33 second half, what happened after was not his fault. If you’re going to blame a unit, there’s an obvious place to start. It’s nothing short of shocking that the Phillies bullpen cratered against the Mets. This is, on paper, one of the deepest bullpens in the league. Hoffman,…