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MIAMI -- Don Mattingly’s only been with the Phillies a few months. He’s only been interim manager a few days.
Mattingly has learned a lot about the organization in that time, but there’s more to learn and do. He said his staff and others will meet early this week in Philadelphia to examine everything they are doing.
What’s working? What’s not?
How can they get better and save the season?
“Honestly, it’s not something that’s about anything that we’ve done to this point,” Mattingly said on Sunday morning at loanDepot park. “It’s something that they do in Toronto, and it’s something I like. It’s like, where are we as a group? And, it’s everybody in there. It’s not just like me and another guy. It’s the whole staff, part of the front office, whatever.
“It’s, these are the facts. This is where we are in reality. You guys hear me talk about it: you play good baseball. Are we playing good baseball? Are we not? What are we doing according to the league? Where do we rank? Right? It’s not something that we're putting in. It’s more that I liked it in Toronto. I thought it was a good thing. And you bring it with you. There’s things in your whole career, you bring with you. Somebody shows me something, I like it, It becomes mine. That’s what I do now.”
Mattingly said they will meet again in another three weeks to a month to see what’s changed.
“Is it a trend? Is it something, hey, let’s don't dismiss this,” he said. “You can say three weeks [ago] the season started ... But then, if we keep this, we’ve got to keep an eye on it moving forward. This is an area, it stayed consistently like this, what’s going on? What exactly is going on?”
Here are some things they might discuss this week:
The defense
The Phillies entered Sunday’s game against Miami last in the Majors with -28 Defensive Runs Saved. The next worst team is the A’s (-8). The Phils’ defense has been bad, but it’s almost impossible that they’re nearly four times as bad as the next worst team in MLB.
Statcast said the Phillies are tied for 27th with a -11 Outs Above Average.
It’s still bad, obviously, but it’s more in line with reality.
The Phillies’ batting average on balls in play is an absurd .351, which is 32 points higher than the second-ranked Orioles (.319). The highest mark for a non-shortened season is .331 by the 2007 Rays.
It suggests some bad luck, but also that defenders might not be positioned properly.
“It is something that we want to look into as a group,” Mattingly said. “Balls get through. I don't like talking about it, because it kind of feels like an excuse. We've had a lot of balls drop. You guys can look up all the numbers, all this stuff. In general, I think we look at everything that's happened up to this point. It's like when we make a bobble or don't make a play, it's came back to hurt us, right?
“So that’s kind of been where it's went so far. I don't think that, oh, there's more balls getting through the infield -- what are we doing? I'm thinking, let's just keep an eye on it.”
Fastballs/Bohm
The Phillies are batting .242 against four-seam and two-seam fastballs, which is 27th in MLB. They ranked third (.274) last season and fourth (.278) in 2024.
Alec Bohm’s struggles against fastballs have played a significant role in those struggles. He entered Sunday batting .088 (5-for-57) against fastballs, which ranked last out of 310 batters (minimum 100 pitches seen).
The rest of the team is batting .261, still below the past couple years.
Getting Bohm, who hit cleanup on Sunday, on track is critical. Asked what he tried to do when he was in a slump, Mattingly said, “Hit it hard. Basically, it’s like, ‘[Forget] it. I’m going to square some [stuff] up. I don’t care where it goes. I don’t care if I get a hit, but I’m going to square some balls up and get back to competing and getting after it.’”
The bullpen
It looks like the starting pitching is coming around with Zack Wheeler’s return and Taijuan Walker’s departure. The bullpen will get a significant boost when closer Jhoan Duran returns, which is expected this week.
But there are bullpen concerns. José Alvarado (6.75 ERA), Brad Keller (4.61 ERA), Tanner Banks (6.57 ERA) and Jonathan Bowlan (8.31 ERA) have all struggled to varying degrees.