As weather warms up, maybe Phils will do the same
PHILADELPHIA » By the time the rain clouds cleared and the bruises left by the New York Mets subsided nine days ago, Phillies manager Joe Girardi acknowledged that his team needed to get away. Seven days on the West Coast would be difficult, but the breath of fresh air after a stagnant and wasteful homestand could supply a needed jolt.
When the Phillies hit the PHL tarmac in the wee hours Monday morning, the difference of a week was startling.
Despite a blown, ninthinning lead in a loss Sunday, a 5-2 run through Seattle and Dodger Stadium had the Phillies within a game of .500 and in second place in the National League East, ahead of Tuesday’s game with San Diego. It was a far cry from the 1-5 homestand that preceded it. And the big change?
“Everyone’s been asking that, what’s the difference?,” Kyle Schwarber puzzled. “And I don’t think anyone’s really shocked.”
Girardi’s answer centered on the patience he’d preached through an uneven April, which came on the heels of an abbreviated, labor-lockoutmarred spring.
“It seems like the weather has kind of turned,” Girardi said. “We got some nice weather in LA to play in, and guys really loved it.”
So it is — with apologies to Tuesday guest Charlie Manuel — the onset of hittin’ weather.
But as difficult a sell as patience has been, it may just have been time that the Phillies needed. The road trip saw Rhys Hoskins bust out, Schwarber club big homers in Los Angeles and Jean Segura reinforce his case as the club’s steadiest hitter. Lineup comfort, with Schwarber and Nick Castellanos still new to the group and the unplanned adaptation to Bryce Harper’s elbow injury, seemed to grow by the game.
The trip was thus less revelatory than concrete proof, night after night, of who the Phillies thought they were amid April’s headwinds.
“I think we all know who we are as a team,” Harper said. “We’ve just got to take advantage of that and continue to do what we’re doing. Continue having good atbats, playing the game the right way, picking up the guy behind you, things like that. I think we’re doing that really well as a team right now.”
Individual performances finally translated into wins. Hoskins went 9-for-32 with four homers and 10 RBIs. He returns carrying an eightgame hitting streak and holds the keys to longawaited stability in the leadoff spot. It’s 11 games for Segura, who homered three times on a .409 trip. Alec Bohm stung the ball at a .323
clip, with multiple hits in seven of his last 12 games. Harper was incandescent: 14-for-23, nine extra-base hits, a sub-orbital 1.904 OPS.
The numbers have contained that excellence all season. The Phillies are third in the NL in runs per game (4.91), second in batting average (.256) and tops in slugging percentage (.431) and OPS (.750). They lead the league in percentage of balls that are hard-hit (42.8) and are second in baseball in linedrive percentage at 26.4. Hard-hit line drives make for a sustainable offensive strategy.
“We’ve kind of been showing that the whole year,” Schwarber said, “and I know there’s been times where we haven’t scored a lot of runs, but I’m not shocked with the guys in the room because the way we’ve prepared, the way we go about our business, has been really good. We’ve hit a lot of balls hard throughout the whole year. I think that’s kind of the consistent thing that you can follow, is the way that we’re striking baseballs and the way we take our
at-bats.”
The next frontier is on the mound. Squandered leads in LA made things more adventurous than need be, and a blown save by Corey Knebel Sunday tempered the excitement. The return of Zach Eflin from the COVID injured list should solidify the rotation, and Schwarber, for one, is advocating the same faith in the staff as what the lineup got and has validated.
There was, inside the room at least, no doubt that the Phillies were capable of such a stretch. Now, the challenge is to not confine it to one week.
“We’ve just got to keep going,” Harper said. “We can’t lay down. We’ve got to keep going, keep playing good baseball, keep having good at-bats.
We’ve got to go in ready to play each day, no matter who we’re playing, no matter who’s in the other dugout, have the right mindset and play the right way.”