Philadelphia Phillies: 2 storylines to follow in weekend series vs Toronto
By David Esser
While the Philadelphia Phillies were ultimately able to secure the series win against Washington this week, the manner in which the three-game set ended left a rather sour taste in everyone’s mouth.
The team was nearly held scoreless against an aging Patrick Corbin on Thursday, and needed extra innings to beat the Nats on Wednesday. A series win is a series win, but the Phillies are still playing rather inconsistent baseball at the moment.
Unfortunately for Philadelphia, the schedule keeps on churning, as they’re set to take on the surging Toronto Blue Jays this weekend away from home. The Blue Jays are coming off a clean sweep of the Atlanta Braves, and are favored to take care of business against an up-and-down Phillies squad.
The Philadelphia Phillies have their work cut out for them this weekend.
Some storylines worth watching during the three-game affair:
Can the offense string together multiple productive days at the plate?
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The story of this team for the last three years running, the Phillies offense remains one of the more up-and-down in all of baseball. If Bryce Harper and J.T. Realmuto ever have an off night at the plate, the team typically struggles to generate any sort of offense.
If it wasn’t for an Odubel Herrera induced home run on Wednesday, this team would be coming off back-to-back series losses within their own division. For an offense that was regarded as one of the best in baseball last season – that’s concerning.
As things currently stand, the team’s production – specifically as we get deeper into the lineup – has been very poor. Rhys Hoskins’ OBP is down below .290, Alec Bohm is hitting just .216 on the season, and Didi Gregorius hasn’t been all that good either as he continues to battle elbow soreness.
If this team expects to be in contention for a postseason spot by year’s end, they’re going to have to start getting better offensive production out of their entire lineup, top to bottom. That starts this weekend against a Toronto pitching staff that has been pretty solid this season.