After fighting for a one-day respite, the Phillies went down relatively quietly in their winner take all Game 3 with the Braves. Aaron Nola was given the start and was tasked with at least giving the Phillies three solid innings, but he couldn’t even escape the first without giving up a back breaking three-run homer. The debate started to rage over whether Zack Wheeler should’ve started in his stead, but he too gave up a two-run bomb of his own pitching in relief to make the whole thing pointless.
Really, the pitching was moot because once again, the Phillies offense could not get anything going, this time against an Atlanta bullpen game that featured three shutout innings from opener Ray Kerr.
This is going to be a long offseason where the Phillies will face numerous painful questions. First off, they have to find a permanent manager, whether that be Alex Cora or not. Then they have to find some way to inject life into the 30th ranked offense by OPS+. They have to find a way to build a bullpen that has more than two reliable arms in it. They will have to determine if their younger players such as Andrew Painter and Justin Crawford as well as prospects Aidan Miller and Gage Wood are in their long-term plans or not. Finally, they may have to come to terms with the hardest thing of all: the possibility that some of their stars are no longer the MVP caliber players they were in the past but rather All-Star type contributors at best.
And all of that isn’t even taking into account the impending lockout that threatens to wipe out most of the offseason and some or all of the 2027 regular season. There’s no telling exactly what state baseball will be in when the Phillies next take the field.
So, where do the Phillies go from here?
