High Hopes: A Phillies Podcast - 4 Things The Phillies Need To Fix ASAP | WIP Daily

Episode Date: August 12, 2024

After another troubling series, Joe Giglio lists four things the Phillies have to fix if they want to be successful in October. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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with takes from someone who's never short on them. It's WIP Daily with Joe Giglio. Welcome on in. WIP Daily. Joe Giglio with you. I appreciate it. Listen, subscribe and follow the podcast. Curse the YouTube feed.

94 WIP. Check it out there. All right. Time to get into here on a Monday after the Phillies. And I thought they had turned a corner. Actually, twice last week. I said, you know, the game a week ago Sunday against the Mariners when they won, I thought that was the beginning of the end of the worst. And then they went out and won two out of three in Los Angeles. And I felt, all right, you know, that does feel like the beginning of the

end of the worst. I feel good about that. And then they win the first game in Arizona. I said, well, they're really back now. And then they go out and they lose on the walk-off Friday night. And then they just get shellacked on Saturday and on Sunday. And yesterday, listless baseball, sloppy baseball, and a team that looked like they wanted to be anywhere else but on a field in

Arizona. Meanwhile, the Diamondbacks are playing like their hair's on fire and doing everything to win a game and pouring on runs and hitting home runs, taking the extra base. And the Phillies look listless for a lot of that baseball game. And the Phillies have to get some things fixed ASAP. Now the schedule turns. They come home from Miami.

They come home for the Washington Nationals. Both teams not good post-All-Star break, especially Miami. After trading basically anything that had any value under the sun, they traded it away. So they're a bad baseball team right now. And this should be an opportunity for the Phillies to get going. It should be. But they need to get some things fixed.

ASAP, if this thing's going to get back in order, they're 7-15 since the All-Star break. They're barely holding on to the best record in the National League just by a tiebreaker. And they could be, if they don't wake up now, they're going to be the third seed in the NL pretty quickly here. The Dodgers are right there with them. And the Brewers actually now own the best run differential in the National League East, in the National League, excuse me.

And they're not far behind in terms of the standing. So the Phillies need to wake up, not for the division. I haven't blinked at all in the division. The Braves stink. The Braves, I don't know if the Braves are going to make the playoffs. The Braves are a fringe playoff team right now. They are going to make the playoffs. The Braves are a fringe playoff team right now. They're not as good as Arizona. They're not as good as San Diego.

They're not as good as the Phillies, even though the Phillies have stunk since the All-Star break. The Braves are in that muck with the Mets and I'll pull up the other end and I'll potential wildcard because the Giants probably are the next team that's right there with the Mets and the Braves. I don't think this team's any good.

Right now it's Braves holding on by a half game over the Mets, one and a half over St. Louis, one and a half over the Giants. There's your wild card race. Cubs three, Cincinnati four and a half, Pirates five. I mean, that's your crux of your wild card race, that last spot. But I want to get things to fill you to clean up ASAP. They need to fix these things now if they're going to get back on the winning ways. And the number one thing is they need to figure out the

fifth spot in the order because everything they're trying stinks right now. Yesterday was Bryce's thought. Well, Bryce's thought since July 1st is a 566 OPS. That stinks. Okay. Obviously, JT Ramutos is coming off the IL. Stinks. Hitting 193 with a home run and a 562 OPS. Don't even discuss the center field situation or the left field situation because right now with Austin Hayes out, and I think actually Austin Hayes, if he had been here and hitting, could have been a candidate, but he's now on the injury list.

He hurt that hamstring against the Dodgers. You have Austin Hayes hurt. So your extra outfielder right now is a combination of Johan Rojas, who can't hit, and Cal Stevenson, who just got here. And then, of course, there's Brandon Marsh, who is getting the bulk of the right, of the opportunities to bat fifth against right-handed pitching.

Brandon Marsh has struck out 40 times in 99 at-bats since July 1st. That is over a 40% strikeout rate. That is an enormous, enormous strikeout rate. And one, I mean, quite frankly, he can't hold. I mean, there's just no way that Brandon Marsh can hold that kind of strikeout rate and be an effective player at the big league level. I mean, there's just no way. So, I mean, they got to figure this thing out and they got to get that guy out of the fifth spot. So they tried Stott.

That's not going to work. They tried Marsh. That's not going to work. Right now, their fifth best hitter is Nick Castellanos. He should be in the fifth spot. And you guys know my feelings on Castellanos. I'm not the biggest fan. I don't love the way he chases the plate,

but he's put together the best at-bats out of this entire group we're talking about for the better part of two months. He's their fifth best hitter right now. He should bat fifth. They shouldn't overcomplicate this. I'm a big lefty-righty guy when it comes to trying to structure a lineup, and I understand if you're putting Castellanos five, you're inviting late in the game a team to go with a right-hander versus Boehm and Castellanos.

And they're both far better against lefties. So you want to get them a more advantageous type of thing. And you're kind of taking that away from them. But since the All-Star, second half of the year, I mean, Brandon Marsh has the second worst strikeout rate in all of baseball. Luis Robert, ironically, is the only guy with a worse strikeout rate in the second half of the season. And you can't survive like that in about 50 in an order, not in a good lineup, not without significant power. Of the other guys that have a strikeout rate, let's say 30% or

above in the second half, you know, you got guys like Matt Olson of seven home runs. Pete Alonzo has six home runs. Jake Cave, former Philly, has four home runs. Willie Adamas has six. O'Neal Cruz has four. You know, Doyle in Colorado has five. And you got Brandon Marsh with two. The numbers just don't, it just doesn't cut it. It's got to be better and it has to start with that fifth spot in the order. That's the first thing they got to fix right now. Second thing they have to fix ASAP is they got to get Trey Turner going because Trey Turner in the second half of the season has been abysmal. And I mean abysmal. Since the start of the second half of the season, Trey Turner's weighted runs created plus is 33. Again, a scale of average.

Average is 100. He has been among the, actually, as I search it now, Marcia Turner have been two of the 10 worst hitters at baseball since the All-Star break. But Trey Turner, since the All-Star break, is rolling with a 33 weighted runs created plus. He's hitting 176 with a 219 on base and a 264 slugging percentage he has been i mean awful in the second half of the season he was so good leading into the all-star

break and obviously was hitting 340 and actually started the allStar game. But since then, he has taken a nosedive here. He's barely now hitting over 300 for the season, which is pretty remarkable considering the All-Star game wasn't that long ago. It was a month ago. And he was hitting the 340s and earned his way into that spot to start there. We might look back at the All-Star game and it might be one of those. Like Austin Hayes started the All-Star game last year for the AL, or Castellanos made the team a year ago. We might look back on that if trade has to turn a season around. And I just was talking about how the lineup right now is four guys.

It's Schwarber, it's Turner, it's Harper, it's Boehm, and they need to find their fifth. And I think the fifth right now should be Castellanos. He's been the most consistent guy in the bottom, middle to the bottom of the order. But part of the issue with the whole operation right now is Schwarber's hit. Harper, you know, had a down spell, but he's been hitting a little bit more lately. And Boehm has been pretty hot. Boehm's one of the few guys in the strip that hit the whole time, but Turner's not hitting. So it's taking that strength of the team, which is those

top four in the lineup, and it's really knocking it down a peg because he's not doing anything. And it doesn't feel like with the Trey Turner hits, they're seeing eye dribblers to the left side. I mean, once in a while, he'll hit a pretty sharp single up the middle, but it doesn't feel like it's any sort of oomph to his offense in the second half of the year. It just feels like it's just dribbler, and if it's a double, it's a dribble down the third base line

like it was a couple nights ago. It's just not there. So that is becoming an issue here for the Philadelphia Phillies. They need to get the fifth spot in order straightened out. They need to get Trey Turner straightened out, and his defense continues to be an issue. As I look at the team, I continue to be amazed because they have a hitter in Edmundo Sosa continues to be an issue. And as I look at the team, I continue to be amazed because

they have a hitter in Edmundo Sosa who only gets to play a couple times a week. Yet Edmundo Sosa has been their fifth best hitter this season. And a lot of nights he doesn't get to play. And I go back to the idea I had in June, in May, that when Trey Turner got healthy, he should put an outfield glove on and go help in the outfield. And just imagine if this team, instead of starting Cal Stephenson or, you know, Johan Rojas on a daily basis right now, could have Trey Turner in the outfield where obviously his offense plays up because his shortstop is not as significant

considering all the great young hitting shortstops there are. But you put him in center field, that offense plays up. It plays up. So if you have a 290 hitter with a 795 OPS, let's just say he ends the season somewhere in that range, that plays up in center field compared to shortstop, but does it play as much? And anyway, Sosa has had a good year. So the last thing they need to get cleaned up pretty quickly here is they need to get their starting pitching back to generating some strikeouts because I've noticed that as well. In the second half of the year, they just have not been as a team striking batters out at the same rate. And it feels like the ball is in play a lot

more. And it's tough to overcome that in, in the modern major leagues, there's too many good hitters. There's too much speed. There's too much athleticism. And it's just really hard to try to get a team going where you get a ton of outs. And the Phillies have some good defenders. Obviously, Rojas is a really good defender. Marsh can be a good defender. Bryce can be good. Stott could be good. But they're not good on the left side of the infield. Let's just be real. They're not good with Turner and Boehm. And they're not good in right field. So every night you're going to have three spots on your team that is just not very good. So as a team this year, the Phillies rank sixth in Major League Baseball in strikeouts per nine innings. That's pretty good. Let's grab the, I want to just look at the starting pitchers.

Okay. Starting pitchers this year, the Phillies, I want to see where they rank as a season total, and then we'll go to the second half, because it feels like they're getting less whiffs in the second half. So as starters this year, the Phillies starters are 16th in baseball in strikeouts. It's not enormous. A lot of those strikeouts are from the bullpen. So they're 16th in baseball for the season in strikeouts from starting pitching.

Now let's look at the second half and see how that has played itself out compared to the first half. In the second half of the year, Philly's starting pitchers, and obviously I know a lot of this has been Tyler Phillips and Kobe Aller and all that, but Philly's starting pitchers since the All-Star break are 28th in baseball in strikeouts per nine innings. That's an alarming number. They're 16th for the year, but they're 28th. I mean, the only two staff striking out less batters, starting pitching staffs, since the All-Star break, are the Chicago White Sox and the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Whew! That's not where you want to be. I mean, they're in the range with the Oakland Athletics, with the Chicago White Sox. That's the kind of company they're keeping. Now, at the top, the Houston Astros, the Atlanta Braves, the San Francisco Giants, the Milwaukee Brewers, the Minnesota Twins, the New York Mets, the New York Yankees. Teams that get a lot of strikeouts.

That is definitely something to look at. And the other thing is their walks are a little bit higher than you want them to be considering the strikeouts their fourth best in walks i shouldn't say they are a little bit high man the mariner staff it's unbelievable they don't walk anybody but the bottom line is in the first half the philly strikeout way more batters per nine innings as a starting staff than they are in the second half so let's add it together They're getting very little offense out of 6-7-8-9 every single night. 5-6-7-8-9 every single night. Their best fifth hitter has not been put back to the fifth spot for two months, even though he's produced and nobody else has.

Trey Turner, who is one of the grouping that you expect to hit and need to hit in the two spot, has been totally abysmal in the second half of the year. It's been a disaster for him since the All-Star game. And their starting pitching, which was the strength of the team in the first half of the year, is towards the bottom of baseball and generating strikeouts, and they're allowing a lot of contact in front of a team that has a bad defender in right field,

has a bad defender at shortstop, and has a below-average defender at third base. And an inexperienced first baseman. I'll just put it that way. I think Bryce is good over there, but he's inexperienced. And once in a while there's a play, it's like he broke the wrong way

or he should have dove for the ball, said he covered or vice versa. So you have some inexperience, you have some below average, and you're basically biting your nails every time the ball goes in the field because you don't know, is it going to be caught?

Is it not going to be caught? Is there going to be a playmate on it? And just in general, you need to generate more strikeouts. The Phillies only have one starting pitcher right now that has averaged more than a strikeout per nine for the season. I mean, that's it right now. It's just Zach Wheeler. Nola has been below a strikeout per nine innings.

Christopher Sanchez, below a strikeout per nine. Now, Ranger was right about 8.7, close to a strikeout per nine. He hasn't pitched in a while. Tyrone Walker, two back tomorrow, is at 7.3. Now, Spencer Turnbull was well over, but he's been out a while. Tyler Phillips, well under. You think about the guys that have taken down starts here, and it's like Mercado, well under.

Kobe Allard, well under. They've had a lot of have taken down starts here and it's like, you know, Mercado well under Kobe Allard well under, you know, they've had, they've had a lot of guys take down starts around here lately that you really don't want to, but they've had no choice because of the injuries they've had. Now Kirk ring Strom Hoffman Alvarado. These guys are all over, you know, the, the, the line you need for strikeouts and, and we'll see, you know,

and that's kind of carrying the day, but they need these starting pitchers to get back to where they were and they need them to do it asap if this thing's going to turn out the good news the good news is the road is the schedule is about to turn here a little bit for the phillies because it just it doesn't look as daunting when you look at it for the next few weeks i know the astros have played good baseball. They'll be here in a couple of weeks, but the bottom line is the next, the next between now and Labor Day Monday. Okay. It's Miami at home, Washington at home, at Atlanta, at KC. They're both closer to pretty good than great. Home for Houston, obviously tough series. Home for Atlanta,

again, that's not as daunting. I'm going to put it out there right now before we wrap this episode up. I expect a 4-2 this week at bare minimum against Miami and Washington. I want a 5-1. Actually, no, let's go 5-1. 5-1 this week. Then the next week, they'll go 3-3. That's an 8-4.

Let's take 2 out of 3 against Houston. That is a 10-5. Split against Atlanta against Houston that is a 10-5 split against Atlanta and that is a 12-7 over the next 19. That's my goal through Labor Day. 12-7

over the next 19. They get there. It should put them at 81-56 as we head down the stretch of the season and then we'll determine how far and how big their win total could get for the 2024 season. They got to get the bottom of the order right. They got to move Castellanos to five.

They got to get Trey Turner awake again because he has been asleep since the All-Star break. And they got to get these starters to get some whiffs again. Appreciate everyone listening, subscribing, following the podcast. These are fixes the Phillies need ASAP. We'll talk soon.