The Philadelphia Phillies are on a free fall at the moment. Sitting at the bottom of the NL East, along with the New York Mets, fresh off a 12-game losing streak, is the Phillies. They entered Thursday 8-16, on an eight-game losing streak and already 8.5 games back of the Atlanta Braves near the end of April.
It’s been a collective team effort in the Phillies’ futility over the past few weeks. The Phillies have the worst run differential (-51) in baseball by a comfortable margin. The large disparity is a combination of disappointing starting pitching and the Phillies’ struggling to sustain anything at the plate over the course of a game.
One area the team has particularly struggled in is against lefties, where it is collectively hitting .171.
New BP Arms
The Phillies are a team scrambling for answers, and Phillies hitting coach Kevin Long believes he may have found a partial answer.
Charlotte Varnes of The Athletic, in her April 23 article, wrote about how Long believes the Phillies’ use of a lefty batting-practice arm can help cure the Phillies’ woes against left-handers.
“To Long, the struggles partly come back to the lack of a lefty batting practice arm,” Varnes wrote. “The Phillies were without one until a few days ago, when Logan Mathieu joined the team. Long, who would typically throw lefty batting practice, had surgery last August and is still unable to throw. Bullpen coach Cesár Ramos and assistant pitching coach Mark Lowy throw lefty batting practice, but can’t during games. Mathieu can.”
Long also believes the Phillies’ luck will turn around if they are more patient at the plate, something they didn’t practice on Wednesday when they struck out 12 times against the Cubs.
The Phillies are figuring this out as they go, since many of the players have never been in a skid of this magnitude in their careers.
What’s Next
On Thursday, the Phillies dropped their now ninth straight game after losing 8-7 in the 10th inning to the Cubs. While they lost, the Phillies showed their first signs of life on offense in almost two weeks, battling back from deficits of 5-2 and 7-6.
However, the team is still trying to figure out what can get them over the hump, including team leader Bryce Harper.
ESPN’s Jesse Rogers, in his April 23 article, wrote about Harper and the Phillies figuring out how to proceed amid the unprecedented predicament they have found themselves in.
“I can’t remember something like this in my career,” Harper said Thursday morning. “We got to get through it. Obviously, we don’t want to be where we are right now. I think you could probably tell me better if we have been through this, or other teams that I’ve played with have been through this, but I know teams that have been through this and been through the mud a little bit and still climbed out of it. Yeah, we got to do it.”
The Phillies’ next chance to finally get back in the win column will be on Friday when they take on the NL East-leading Braves in Atlanta.
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