There’s no sugarcoating it. The Phillies have been a terrible playoff baseball team over their last three series.
Since their 2023 NLCS Game 2 victory over the Diamondbacks gave them a 2-0 series lead and
a seeming glide path to their second straight World Series, the Phils have gone 2-8 in their last 10 playoff games. Most shockingly, they have gone 1-4 in their last five postseason games at Citizens Bank Park.
Once the greatest home field advantage, not only in baseball but in professional sports, CBP has become something of a house of their own horrors in the playoffs. It’s still incomprehensible they lost Games 6 and 7 of the NLCS at home in 2023, that the bullpen blew an epic Zack Wheeler start in Game 1 of the 2024 NLDS and that they coughed up a 3-0, 6th inning lead in Game 1 against the Dodgers on Saturday night.
Their 5-3, Game 1 loss was excruciating, not only in its end result but also in its familiarity. We’ve seen this show before. We’ve seen how it ends. No one wants a sequel.
It’s hard to envision things turning out differently than last year’s NLDS defeat in four games to the Mets, or the 7-game loss to Arizona in 2023, because the same issues appeared like chronic acne once again.
Star players going cold at the plate. No clutch hits. A bullpen that couldn’t protect a late lead. Saturday’s Game 1 had all the familiar notes.
Confidence in the Phillies has waned, because recent history guides our thoughts and emotions. But the past is not always prologue. Historical trends are what they are — history. They can certainly indicate a likelihood of something happening, but they in no way are determinative of what will happen.
There is little doubt these Phillies are feeling the pressure of falling short in three consecutive seasons. They are ravenous to finally win a World Series, perhaps too much so. As someone who has never played professional baseball before, I am not qualified to offer any real advice, so what I do offer are some ideas I think I might be helpful.
A pep talk, if you will.
It’s easy to look at the big picture, hosting a parade down Broad Street, and for that to be the main thing. Winning the World Series. This season has always been about that. The legacy of so many players — Bryce Harper, Trea Turner, Kyle Schwarber, J.T. Realmuto, Brandon Marsh, Alec Bohm, Bryson Stott, the pitching staff, are all seemingly linked to getting this job done.
But these Phillies can’t afford to think that way. They can’t think about winning the pennant, or the NLCS or the NLDS. They can’t even really think about winning Game 2.
These players need to stop thinking about winning or losing in that way, and distill things down to their simplest form.
Win the next pitch.
That’s it. Win the next pitch. Win this pitch right here, and then, when that one’s done, win the next one. At the plate, win as many pitches in that at-bat as you can. Focus on nothing else. On the mound, win your next pitch. Execute it. Focus on making the best pitch you can each time and, if you miss, get right back up there and try again.
The team that ends up winning the most pitches in a game, and a series, will almost certainly end up on the winning side.
Win the next pitch.
It’s easier said than done, and everyone understands that the Dodgers’ starting rotation is nasty. Hitting 100 mph fastballs, even ones down the middle of the plate, are not child’s play. The Dodgers are very good. But guess what? The Phillies are loaded with good, too. Lots of good. This team won 96 games in 2025 and won their division by 13 games. It was no fluke. By every metric, these Phillies, the consensus favorites to win it all when this tournament began, are very, very good.
Perhaps winning the championship/series/game is simply putting too much pressure on them. So, forget about all that. Forget about who is pitching and who is hitting. Focus on executing each and every pitch your way.
Win the next pitch. And then the next one. And then the next one.
In 2022, the Phillies played with house money and enjoyed every rollicking minute of it. They didn’t play with the weight of expectations on their shoulders. They played loose and free. They lived in the moment, taking advantage of every opportunity, every walk, every error, every meatball over the plate. They did so because they didn’t have aspirations of winning a World Series in that moment. They just wanted the ride to go on for as long as it could.
But something happened when this team went up 2-0 in the 2023 NLCS. Suddenly, the pressure to win the World Series, perhaps for the first time ever, became the expectation. So perhaps it’s no coincidence the big hits, the big relief outings, and the big victories, stopped there. Perhaps it’s no coincidence they are 2-8 since that game.
No Phillies team has ever won a playoff series after losing Game 1. They are 0-8.
While past isn’t prologue, one could also argue the Phillies are due.
This has been one of the most resilient teams in Phils history. They never seemed to allow a bad game or bad series carry over into the next one. The only time that really happened was in their sweep at the hands of the Mets in New York, and they responded by watching Kyle Schwarber hit four homers in a romp over the Braves the following night, leading to a dominant, four-game, series win.
Make no mistake, these Dodgers are much better than those Braves, but the larger point is that this team seemed to be able to shrug off bad games this season when they occurred. But that was the regular season. This is the playoffs. The stakes, and the pressure, are higher.
The Phillies need to learn how to have fun in the postseason again and try for nothing more than to make this journey last as long as possible. Heroes usually aren’t made by force, it comes from being relaxed, focused, and doing nothing more than what you can do. There’s no doubt this team needs heroes, now more than ever.
That starts by honing in on the little things, in fact, the littlest thing possible.
Win. The. Next. Pitch.
