The Phillies and Red Sox have a lot in common this season. After making the playoffs in 2025, both teams made offseason moves that weren’t embraced by many fans. And both got off to poor starts that resulted in an early season firing of the manager.
Another thing the teams have in common: They’ve gotten disappointing play from their All-Star shortstops. Trea Turner is off to a poor start this season and has been worth negative WAR (yet he’s somehow avoided receiving too much scrutiny) while his counterpart
on the Red Sox isn’t faring much – if any – better.
That’s nothing new for Trevor Story since his career with the Red Sox has mostly been a disappointment.
He was a two-time All-Star and Silver Slugger winner for the Colorado Rockies, and upon hitting free agency, cashed in with a six-year/$140 million deal with the Sox. Spending big money on Rockies players has always been a “buyer beware” situation, because it’s often unclear how much their numbers have been aided by the thin air of Colorado.
Story’s numbers indeed took a significant downturn upon leaving the Rockies, but a large part of that was due to poor health. In his first three seasons in Boston, Story was limited to 163 games. In 2025, he finally managed to stay healthy for a full season, and while his offense wasn’t what it was in Colorado, he hit 25 home runs.
Apparently, there was a lack of consensus among Red Sox management whether Story’s upturn was sustainable. Manager Alex Cora believed in Story, and continued to bat him high in the lineup, while people in the front office thought the underlying metrics showed that a drop off was coming.
While that was far from the only reason Cora was fired, it certainly didn’t help his case when Story got off to a poor start to the season.
Story has been dropped from second in the lineup, and now typically finds himself batting fifth. But the change in positions hasn’t helped his offense turnaround. After a bad month of April, Story has been even worse in May, putting up a .478 OPS and he hasn’t hit a home run since April 15th.
Pennant year song battle
Nobody can stop It’s a Mistake! The Men at Work tune defeated I Get Around by 2Pac to hold the title for another week.
This week’s contender is also from 1983. With both the Phillies and Red Sox in similar situations at the moment, I figured You and I by Eddie Rabbitt and Crystal Gale would be appropriate:
If the song sounds familiar to younger readers, that’s because it was covered on both Glee and 30 Rock.
Vote for the winner now:
Non-Phillies thought
It is truly amazing how quickly the Sixers and Flyers squandered all the goodwill from their first-round playoff victories. You can partly excuse the Flyers who were just happy to be there and were clearly outmatched by the Carolina Hurricanes. But the Sixers get no excuses, as they’re a veteran team whose performance in game three was awful, while game four was one of the most shameful rollovers in team history.
I figured GM Daryl Morey and coach Nick Nurse were safe after beating the Celtics in round one, but seeing the Sixers get embarrassed like that might prompt changes. Then again, I don’t think anything will improve too dramatically as long as Josh Harris owns the team.
Additional thought about the series
The scheduled pitchers for Thursday’s game are Jesus Luzardo and Ranger Suarez, which should get some fans feeling a certain way. This past offseason, with Suarez a free agent, and Luzardo hitting the market the year after, it seemed unlikely that the Phillies would be able to retain both of them.
They chose Luzardo, signing him to a lucrative extension shortly after Suarez left for the Red Sox as a free agent.
The early results are not good for the Phillies. Luzardo can apparently be only very good or very bad in any given start, and he’s had more bad outings than good ones this season. Meanwhile, Ranger has a 2.77 ERA, although he’s also had his share of inconsistency. Oddly, in every one of his starts, he’s either given up zero or four runs.
It also doesn’t help that the rookie who replaced Ranger in the rotation, Andrew Painter, has also been bad lately. But if you want to avoid a team getting too old – as many fans claim they want – then at some point, you have to replace veterans with younger players, and often times, you’re going to have to deal with some growing pains.
It’s obviously too early to cast final judgement on the Phillies decision, but I do suggest Phillies fans not forget that Suarez has yet to maintain good health and effectiveness over a full season. I appreciated the guy, but I won’t miss the annual reports about his back bothering him.
Suarez is also two years older than Luzardo, and there are many who believe his stuff will not age well.
For the Phillies sake, let’s hope that on Thursday, Ranger has one of those four-run outings, while Luzardo can be in “very good” mode.
