A 3-3 road trip to Boston and Pittsburgh was, for me at least, the bare minimum the Phillies had to do. Gaining some steam at home was great, but going to those two cities and laying some eggs would have left a sour taste. They had to at least go .500 to maintain that steam moving forward, but instead won five of six and again look like one of the better teams in baseball.
Deep down, we all knew this was going to be how it was with them. There’s simply too much talent to not be this good. It just
looked like they all were struggling together, now they’re all on the upswing. Now they just need to maintain the momentum and take care of business at home this week.
Three up
Cristopher Sanchez – A lot of people don’t subscribe to The Athletic and I get it. However, I am one of those people that does, which means I can read this article each year, where it talks to different people around the game to try and determine who the actual Aces of the game are. Sanchez came in fifth, behind the names you’d suspect in Skenes, Skubal, Crochet and Yamamoto. However, Skenes and Skubal were placed in their own tier called “The Inner Circle”. I think it’s time to start putting Sanchez into that same conversation with those two, calling for his own placement in that “Inner Circle” of starters.
Kyle Schwarber – What more is there to say? Schwarber’s week was an incredible one and has arguably been the reason this team has moved back over .500. The starting pitching getting their act together is probably the biggest reason, but the offense was doing absolutely nothing during that 10 game rough patch. Seeing Schwarber get hot and vault himself to the top of the home run leaderboard has been a pleasure to watch.
Alec Bohm – Sometimes, a guy just needs a few days off to get his game going again. Rob Thomson had a lot of strong points to his game, but one of his weaker ones was sticking with players in the lineup when they clearly needed to come out of it. He believed that a player slumping needed to keep swinging his way out of the slump and a lot of times, that’s true. It was so blatantly obvious that Bohm needed a break, even for a day, and yet Thomson continued to put him in the lineup. Don Mattingly saw right away that Bohm’s poor production was hurting the team as well, so he sat him down to let him clear his head and he has a week where he collects nine hits in 25 plate appearances. Sometimes, it’s that easy.
Three down
Edmundo Sosa – Remember each time that we say, me included, how Sosa needs to play more and Bohm needs to play less? At the time, it wasn’t wrong. Bohm was horrid and Don Mattingly acted accordingly, sitting him down two games to get his head on straight. The only problem is – Sosa is in one of his own slumps right now and probably shouldn’t be playing much either. I think I know what the team should be looking for at the trade deadline.
J.T. Realmuto – It really does look like age has caught up to Realmuto offensively. As Matt Gelb pointed out, he’s missing fastballs in the zone badly this year. Even though his bat speed is fine, he’s just getting blown away right now. Will it change? Maybe. It had better.
Aaron Nola – There is only so much a person can defend a guy. I’ve been pro-Nola during these struggles last year and this, but even I can’t defend some of his recent performances. Even with the usual caveats of “lower your expectations!”, there is only so low one can go with him.
