2023 Phillies Post Season Discussion

[BostonRoss]

The Phillies are tied with the Braves and Red Sox with six appearances, and if they win tonight will tie the Cardinals with seven. Yankees have 11, Dodgers 8.

[Callison]

Wally World is closed.

Great run by the Phils. The DBs hit in the clutch but the Phils didn't. The DBs hit the Phils relievers, but the Phils couldn't hit theirs.

The series may have turned on game 4, when the Phils' pen disintegrated. Previously, the strongest, most consistent part of the team. They shoulda hadda oughta closed that one. Nola could have shown up for game 6, too.

Congrats to the DBs. They played some great baseball.

[Austinfan]

Those of us who lived through 1964 were scarred for life.

[zambonir]

Welcome, kids

A lot of kid Phillies fans earned their stripes with the team’s loss. Here’s how...

[zambonir]

Lovullo calls the Diamondbacks "a small-market organization" and he's not wrong! They just don't play in one.

'Success is revenge': Diamondbacks relish silencing Phillies to reach World...

[zambonir]

Pretty incredible that Hazen and Lovullo have been running the Dbacks since 2017. Kind of like the Phillies they fell well short of their original competition schedule (after making the playoffs in that first year) and then suddenly delivered, except w/o the massive front office changes.

But also, this:

Less than three weeks after hiring Lovullo, Hazen acquired a centerpiece of his roster. In a trade that ultimately worked out for both sides, the Diamondbacks sent Mitch Haniger, Jean Segura and Zac Curtis to the Mariners for starting pitcher Taijuan Walker and 23-year-old Marte.

That's four guys who played for us!

Building the Diamondbacks: 10 steps that turned Arizona into a postseason...

[MichaelJackSchmidt]

I'm still not a D'Backs believer yet. I think that they just ran into streaky Phillies hitters that were on a down streak. I think the Rangers win in 4 or 5.

[zambonir]

Probably, but they weren't supposed to win any of 'em (or even be in the NLCS). Like the Phillies last year, the final round will probably expose them. But they have the pitching to make a go of it I think.

[EDmuch]

It was a lot more than Dbacks just being lucky. There is an article int he Athletic where so Dback players explained that they had developed a specific strategy for how to pitch to Phillie hitters and use the aggressiveness of our hitters against themselves. It was a lot like we were all assuming: throw a lot of pitchers out of the zone and let our guys chase bad pitches. But they also had a strategy of throwing off speed on what usually would be fastball accounts. They had scouted us and had determined that our hitters were extremely over aggressive on fastball counts. The article also had a quote from DD where he acknowledged that the Dbacks strategy worked a nd that the Phils would have to make adjustments for next year because teams around the league would use that approach against us a lot next year. so it wasn't just that some of our batters were "unlucky", it was that the Dbacks used a specific strategy of making the Phils chase bad pitches.

[Austinfan]

Doesn't surprise me at all, I was complaining about it for months - but the Phillies didn't self-scout?
Maybe some major changes are needed!

[EDmuch]

I wonder if the Dbacks pitching tactics of tempting undisciplined hitters to chase will cause DD to look more favorably on Hoskins over Casty. Rhys certainly was a far more disciplined RH power bat.

[zambonir]

I don't think the Dbacks strategy was any secret. We could all see it in Game 6. But they'd already taken a 3-2 lead in the series by then, and neither players nor coaches can just adjust on a dime. And sometimes when you're not seeing the ball you're not seeing the ball. It wasn't just strategy, it was execution. DBacks made plenty of mistakes that led to the Phillies winning the games they did. And then they didn't. Plus we wouldn't be talking about this at all if not for Kimbrel.

For sure, adding (or returning) one more disciplined bat to the line-up makes sense. But actually moving on from Nick is easier said than done, and we also don't know if the Rhys you are bringing back is still going to be the Rhys that used to put up a .350 OBP (or an .850 OPS). Whatever they do/whoever they get it should be that kind of hitter though.

And maybe Long should think about his approach. But you can't say his approach didn't work just because they lost to the Diamondbacks. It was a great offense and one of the best Phillies teams we've seen this century (probably #2 after 2011. But only #3 or 4 in terms of post-season success).

They got out-managed and out-played in the end, no way to sugarcoat that.

[Austinfan]

I think Long should think about his approach - not make drastic chances but some tweaks, and identify which hitters who can't adjust. Mostly teaching hitters not to swing at pitches they have no chance of hitting and to change their approach with two strikes - Stott excels at this even though he doesn't walk a lot, he forces a pitcher to give him something to hit.

I think it would extend Turner's effective career by a few years if he just stopped swinging wildly at balls outside the zone, the numbers show a huge difference between a 2-1 count and a 1-2 count, for example. And understand that ML pitchers can throw breaking balls in any count.

[EDmuch]

I agree that Turner was one of the most, if not the most, out of control swinger during those last games.

[zambonir]

He absolutely was. But he also hit .500 or something in the first two rounds and is a former batting champion.Maybe that is normal ups and downs, maybe things can be tweaked but also you don't want to break him trying to fix him.

And meanwhile the city never stopped fixating on Schwarber's BA but two more of him would have helped a lot. This city and franchise has always preferred the Castellanos and Ibanez types over the Burrell and Hoskins types (when they aren't smashing everything).

[Austinfan]

Give me another Abreu.

[EDmuch]

What is a @castellanos & Ibanez type?

[EDmuch]

Because Turner has won a batting title is why I think his wild man swinging was so ridiculous. I mean Casty has always been a free swinger but Turner should know better. To me the pivotal moment in the 7th inning where, with a man on third & 2 strikes swung at a pitch way outside & pulled it to third for a found out. A $30 million dollar a year should know that you hit the outside pitch to right field rather than trying to pull it.

[bkox]

Its possible that the Turner we seen this year is who Turner is now. 2022 his OPS was just over 800 and he struck out the most he had in 4 years. And then this year he struck out more. His age 26-28 years were his best and thats considered a players prime. So I expect this to be Turner going forward... but without the extreme ups and downs we saw this year.

The bigger concern is his defense. He had a negative dWAR this year for only the second time in his career

The other thing we forget is that while its so easy for us to say "dont chase the low and away pitch" or "hit it to right field", the deception that pitchers have now figured out makes those pitches look down the middle when they come out of their hands. Hitters have roughly 0.40 seconds reaction time (typically) to: determine the type of pitch. determine if it's a strike or a ball. determine the speed of the pitched ball.

Hopefully there is some trick in Long's book to help with pitch recognition. Although im not sure how many players get better at that after age 30.

[zambonir]

Guys whose offense comes and goes - and is only elite - if they are hitting for average and peak power. Doesn't take walks, not true sluggers.

I think we can still write this year off to Turner's adjustment period. His defense will be better (though if memory serves it was also better early in the season when he wasn't hitting). Castellanos is probably the bigger concern. It was always ludicrous to think he was going to ever have another season like 2021 (let alonev2019) and this is probably what he his. We saw two great peaks and two great valleys. Ironic that was people's Hoskins complaint and neither Nick nor Rhys could make up for that absence overall.