On Sept. 1, the Philadelphia Phillies beat the Arizona Diamondbacks for their sixth win in a row. At 79-60, they were seven games clear of the pack in the NL Wild Card race, with playoff odds north of 99 percent — not a guarantee, but just about as close as you can get.
What a difference a few weeks can make. After another loss on Friday night — their second in a row and eighth in their last 13 games — the Phillies are now fighting for their postseason lives, now just one game ahead of the hard-charging D-backs in what’s become a nail-biting race for the third and final Wild Card spot. And because Arizona won the season series, they just need to finish even with Philly in the standings by the end of this weekend.
Which, at this point, is seeming more and more likely. The Phillies simply haven’t been playing like a playoff team in recent weeks. And unless some of their biggest names turn it around in a hurry, this season is going to end in a $320 million catastrophe.
SS Trea Turner
We’ll start with the guy who started hearing boo birds at Citizens Bank Park after another crucial strikeout in the sixth inning of Friday night’s 2-0 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays (a team that, it should be noted, no longer has anything to play for after clinching the AL East and the No. 1 overall seed). Turner’s got an 81 wRC+ in the month of September, and his performance over the last couple of weeks has been especially gruesome. His approach is all out of whack right now, and when you combine that with his limitations at shortstop, you get a huge anchor atop this lineup.
DH Kyle Schwarber
Schwarber has built up a ton of good will during his time in Philadelphia, but he’s been brutal lately, slugging .229 over the last two weeks. He’s Schwarber, so he’ll always find ways to get on base regularly, but if he’s not hitting the ball over the fence, it’s unclear just where the power is going to come from for this team. Such a top-heavy roster simply can’t afford a slump like this, even with their starting rotation as good as it is.
1B Bryce Harper
On a related note: Harper has homered exactly one time all month, and he has just five extra-base hits overall. He got his second half off to a scalding start in August, but his bat his gone into hibernation along with the rest of his teammates over this critical stretch. For a guy who made a lot of (justified!) noise about how he still deserved to be seen as an elite player … that’s a tough look.
2B Luis Arraez
I hate to add insult to injury here, as Arraez’s status for the postseason is now very much in doubt after suffering an ankle sprain on an ugly-looking play at first base. But even before he landed on the shelf, he’d been killing a Phillies lineup that looked to him as a needed boost at the trade deadline. He’s slashing just .281/.308/.357 in the second half overall, good for an 81 wRC+, and that number drops to 59 over the last two weeks. A player as contact-dependent as Arraez will always be prone to slumps like this, but when his batted balls aren’t finding grass, he adds pretty much nothing of value — and that’s brutal given how Philly prioritized landing him in August.
LHPs Brooks Raley, Jose Alvarado and Tim Mayza
If you throw left-handed, congratulations, there might be a spot for you on the Phillies postseason roster (assuming they get there, that is). All three of Raley — another deadline acquisition gone bust — Alvarado and Mayza have all had ugly blowups in this recent stretch, and at this point Philly’s bullpen has no real answers to deal with impact left-handed hitters in late-game situations. Raley has been particularly brutal, but Alvarado hasn’t been his usual sturdy self of late either. The Phillies have had several righties step up behind Jhoan Duran, but the situation could get ugly if they need to get Shohei Ohtani, Matt Olson and others out in October.
C JT Realmuto
Not to victory lap in a time of crisis, but the Realmuto contract was baffling the minute it was signed, and it looks even worse now as the veteran has gone hitless in his last eight games — a span of 33 plate appearances. He’s not even making the same impact behind the plate as he did in his prime, though his handling of Philly’s pitching staff can’t be overstated. Philly’s catching situation has devolved into an automatic out, an untenable situation given how many question marks they have elsewhere in the lineup.
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