Philadelphia Phillies: The fix for the season is patience

As the Philadelphia Phillies terrible month of May dragged on, the hot takes from fans across the city became more and more pronounced.

Calls for the entire minor league system to be called up in one massive transaction, to fire pitching coach Bob McClure, or to auction off the team’s pieces and start over were just a few of the outlandish suggestions made to fix the Philadelphia Phillies.

There was even a call for the Phillies to bring up 19-year old prospect Mickey Moniak from Single-A Lakewood. Yikes.

Phillies fans have been suffering ever since Ryan Howard crumpled on the last out of the NLCS all those years ago. We’ve seen our favorite players traded away and the replacements offer less than stellar results. At this point, it’s understandable to want and expect results.

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Unfortunately, there is no quick fix to this Philadelphia Phillies ball club. The only thing team officials can do to build a winner right now is exercise patience. It’s not what fans want to hear but it’s the only option that will hopefully lead to long-term success.

Sure we were all hoping that the team was going to be closer to .500 this season and watching this team underperform is no fun, but is calling up Roman Quinn from Triple-A really going to change anything?

The answer is no and the idea that we should call up top prospect J.P. Crawford is also ludicrous. The shortstop has struggled mightily at Triple-A this season and a call-up would be detrimental to his development.

The argument can be made for calling up Rhys Hoskins, who has mashed at Triple-A to a tune of .302 with 13 home runs, but where would he play? Tommy Joseph currently occupies the first base position and has already displayed the ability to hit against big league pitching. Giving up on him for Hoskins would be a mistake, considering Joseph is only one year older and there is no guarantee that Hoskins can even hit at the next level.

The rotation is among the worst in baseball, but whom are you going to replace? The Philadelphia Phillies have hitched their wagon to young arms like Aaron Nola, Vince Velazquez, and Jerad Eickhoff. Their struggles are part of the development process and it is way too early to give up on the young arms.

Seeing Ben Lively pitch well on Saturday was a beautiful sight, but it will surely come with some regression this season. See Eflin, Zach as an example of how a young pitcher’s early season results can turn around quickly.

The offense is sputtering, but over the weekend we were given a glimpse of what it can look like when Maikel Franco and Odubel Herrera are hitting again. Those players need time to work out their struggles. When they are hitting well, the offense will be given a huge boost and we will begin to see the results show up in the win column.

This Philadelphia Phillies team was never a playoff team and while their struggles are unexpected, the only ones that can fix the team are the ones currently playing for it. If Franco and Herrera can continue their positives strokes from this weekend and the team can get decent pitching from Nola, Hellickson and newly called up prospects Lively and Nick Pivetta, the team will play much better than any outside addition or premature minor league promotion.

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As much as it hurts, the only option for the Philadelphia Phillies right now is to exercise patience and wait for the kids to figure it out.

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