For the second year in a row, the Phillies are battling for a Wild Card spot, and it looks like it might go down to the wire. Last year, a handful of players stepped up down the stretch and pushed us into the postseason, including Aaron Nola, Kyle Schwarber, Bryce Harper and others.
This season, we’ve managed to stay in the hunt despite injuries and underperformance by several key players. If we want to make it back to the postseason, several guys need to pick up the slack and play their best when it matters most.
Who’s going to be the hero this year? Here are three Phillies players who need to improve down the stretch.
3 Phillies Who Need to Play Better
1. Trea Turner
This one goes without saying, but we really need Turner to be better, at least at the plate. His baserunning and defense have been strong as always, but the hitting just hasn’t been there.
When you’re making $27 million, you can’t afford to be a No. 8 hitter. We need Turner back at the top of the lineup where he belongs, especially with Kyle Schwarber struggling out of the leadoff spot.
The big thing for Turner is that he needs to stop pressing and cut down on his strikeouts. You can tell he’s trying to do too much, and it’s resulting in the second-highest whiff rate of his career. He’s trying to erase four months of mediocrity with every swing rather than just letting the game come to him.
If he can do that and get his slash line up to around .250/.300/.400, we’d take it. At this point we just need league-average production from him, even though he’s getting paid for All-Star / MVP-level performance.
If Turner gets back on track, that will go a long way toward lengthening the lineup and elevating our offense, which currently rates in the middle of the pack.
2. Bryce Harper
Turner’s not the only star who needs to carry his weight. Harper has avoided criticism for much of the year because Turner’s been so bad, and also because Harper came back from Tommy John surgery in record time.
While his commitment to the team is admirable, Harper probably should have taken more time to recover. He clearly hasn’t been the same player this year, especially in the power department. The fact that it’s early August and he still has a single-digit home run total next to his name is mind-boggling.
Injuries knocking Harper down from MVP in 2021 to All-Star in 2022 to a glorified slap hitter in 2023 has been tough to watch. With Rhys Hoskins out for the year and Turner slumping, Philly needs Harper’s pop more than ever. Instead, it’s been nowhere to be found.
We know how streaky Harper can get, and we saw it last year when he caught fire in the playoffs and basically carried us to the World Series. If he can find his power stroke down the stretch (even if it means taking more time off to stay rested), that would really give our lineup a boost.
Unlike Turner, Harper doesn’t add much value with his glove or legs, so he needs to let his bat do the talking.
3. Aaron Nola
Nola is supposed to be the ace of the staff, but he isn’t pitching like it. Leading the National League in home runs allowed and having an ERA over four in August is not what we want to see.
Nola’s performance has been wildly inconsistent all season. Some days he pitches a gem and looks like the Cy Young candidate he was last year, only to immediately regress the following start and get rocked. He’s dominated good teams like the Rays and been shelled by bad teams like the Pirates, so there’s no rhyme or reason to his performance.
The home run rate is certainly alarming, and his highest walk rate since 2020 isn’t helping either. At least those issues are relatively fixable. If he throws more strikes and locates his pitches better, he should have more success.
Nola needs to get straightened out down the stretch, because we can’t afford to have him pitching like this in October. Maybe his arm is still feeling the strain of throwing 230 2/3 innings last year (including playoffs) — easily the highest total of his career. If he needs to skip a start or two to give his arm some rest, then so be it. He ran out of gas in the postseason last year (14 ER over his final three starts), and that can’t happen again.
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