Section 215
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Philadelphia Phillies: The inability to win away from home needs to change

By David Esser

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - APRIL 13: Aaron Nola #27 of the Philadelphia Phillies reacts in the fourth inning against the New York Mets during game two of a double header at Citi Field on April 13, 2021 in the Flushing neighborhood of the Queens borough in New York City.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - APRIL 13: Aaron Nola #27 of the Philadelphia Phillies reacts in the fourth inning against the New York Mets during game two of a double header at Citi Field on April 13, 2021 in the Flushing neighborhood of the Queens borough in New York City. /
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After a scorching hot start to the new season, the Philadelphia Phillies have had a not-so-great couple of games. They lost their series with the Atlanta Braves over the weekend, and then dropped both double-header games against the New York Mets on Tuesday.

If the Phillies win the next two games against New York (one of them being against Jacob deGrom), they’d be walking out of their four first series with a record of 8-5. Assuming the Mets actually win a deGrom start for once, the Phillies are more realistically looking at a 7-6 or 6-7 record after Thursday.

A rather disappointing start to the season considering they won five of their first six games.

The biggest thing you can point to when assessing why the Phillies have gone ice cold over the last couple of days?

Playing on the road.

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For reasons unknown, the Philadelphia Phillies haven’t been a good road team for quite some time now.

The odd – and rather frustrating – part to the road struggles is that they pre-date a lot of the Phillies’ key roster members. Guys like Bryce Harper, Zack Wheeler, Didi Gregorius, and Joe Girardi weren’t even around in 2018, a year where the organization continuously struggled to win ballgames away from Citizens Bank Park.

We’ve seen this type of anomaly in Philly sports before. The 2020 Sixers in particular were a team that went from looking like Finals contenders at home to full-on lottery pick status on the road.

However, if the Phillies want to end their borderline historic playoff drought, they’re going to have to find a way to consistently “get up” for road games. During the team’s 15 innings of disaster on Tuesday, the entire roster looked somewhat disinterred. They only scored a total of three runs across 15 innings of action, and guys like Hector Neris and Aaron Nola really put in poor performances.

The Philadelphia Phillies road woes will continue to keep them out of October.

As is per usual with any sort of “negativity” this early in the season, people are going to point to the fact that a baseball season in 162 games, and that the Phillies have plenty of time to rebound after a couple ugly outings. However, as shown in the tweet above, this is an issue that has plagued the Phillies for quite some time now. There’s no track record of this team “figuring things out” as the season progresses.

In fact, I’d argue their recent struggles on the road only solidify the argument that this is a ball club that is going to struggle away from CBP this season, similar to how they did in 2018, 2019, and 2020.

I’m not in the Phillies clubhouse, I can’t give a real reason as to why they struggle on the road. Are they not focused? Is there not enough intensity? Is it just a whacky coincidence? Is the airplane food bad???

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Whatever the case may be, the organization is going to have to find a way to eliminate this facet of their play if they want to crack the postseason in 2021. With how competitive the NL East projects to be this year, they’re undoubtedly going to have to win a good number of games in Atlanta, New York, DC, and even Miami.

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