3 Immediate Changes the Phillies Must Make for Game 3 vs Braves

2. Make Better Baserunning Decisions

I'm not going to harp on Bryce Harper specifically here. Mistakes happen. Nobody is sitting in the Phillies locker room thinking that was a good move or trying to justify it.

But the issue was indicative of a deeper problem we've seen in the postseason (and in the regular season before that). The Phillies don't run the bases well.

That's something that starts with the coaching, and is obviously most prominent when it's Dusty Wathan making the calls. He avoided too much widespread criticism in the Wild Card round because we won the series, but he was bad enough in Game 2 that he very well could have cost us a game against the Marlins.

And starting with poor decisions from the coaches works its way down to the players. If they buy in to the system, they'll be learning the wrong things. Their instincts will lead to mistakes. But if they don't buy in its even worse.

If you can't trust your coaches, often finding that ignoring them brings good results, you're going to be more likely to freestyle during the game, and sometimes that comes back to haunt you.

You're not going to fix the deep rooted issues in the middle of a series, but it's certainly something players and coaches need to get on the same page about with some short-term solutions.