Phillies drop two of three from Fish in first divisional battle of 2023
Photo via Houstonian Online
“A hot streak is (eventually) inevitable, right?”
That, unfortunately, is what most Phillies fans are thinking after the first two weeks of the regular season. Despite a strong win in game one of the three-game set, where the Phillies posted 15 runs on 20 hits, the Phils could not keep it together for the remainder of the series.
The Phillies failed to keep up with the Marlins’ offense in game two, and a Jorge Soler game-tying home run in the eighth inning of game three paved the path to a series win for the Marlins.
While Phillies’ manager Rob Thomson felt that his team played “well overall” during the homestand, he recognizes that there is work to be done.
Here are three takeaways from the series:
Stott’s offensive tear continues
It’s not too often that we see a twelve-game hitting streak to start the season, let alone from a player who had a measly .234 batting average in 2022. In fact, Stott is the first player to start the season with at least one hit in all twelve games played since Willie Jones in 1950, who had a hit in his first sixteen regular season games.
Overall, Stott is slashing .420 in exactly 50 regular season at-bats and boasts a .931 OPS. Of his 12 games, he has two or more hits in nine of them, and he recorded three RBI in three games against the Marlins. Stott sits in the 74th percentile in expected batting average and the 98th percentile in whiff percentage. Stott also has three stolen bases.
An up-and-down start to Seranthony Dominguez’s season
After signing a two-year contract extension with the Phillies this past offseason, Seranthony Dominguez said he wanted to make Philadelphia his home. Right now, however, his Philadelphian roommates aren’t too thrilled with his recent performances.
Following a rough Spring Training exhibition season, Dominguez is off to a rocky start. In 4.2 innings, he has allowed seven runs on nine hits, struck out three, and walked four.
Dominguez blew his first save opportunity against the Reds on Sunday and looked no sharper in his only appearance against the Marlins. Only tasked with recording two outs, Dominguez ran into some traffic but ultimately escaped the inning before allowing additional runs to cross the plate.
Progress? Let’s hope so.
Poor base running haunts Phillies
Nobody expected something as simple as base running to be the Phillies’ kryptonite this early in the season. With two outs and the Phillies down by three in the sixth inning of game two, Bryson Stott poked a two-run single into left field. The ball was relayed to third baseman Jean Segura, but the throw did not get there in time to nab Edmundo Sosa, who advanced two bases on the play.
Safe all around? Not exactly.
Segura threw a laser back to first base, picking off Bryson Stott, who took an aggressive turn around first base.
What could have given Christian Pache a chance to tie the game at four turned into a frustrating way to close out a productive sixth inning for the Phillies.
Excluding stolen bases, this blunder was the Phillies’ eighth out on the basepaths in just eleven games in 2023. That is the highest number of team outs on the bases in baseball, but more importantly, these poor decisions are becoming more and more costly.
“It was just a good play by Jean [Segura] to come through and throw back across… And it’s just not a very good play by myself,” Stott said after the Phils’ game-two loss. “[We must be] aggressive, but not stupid. There’s a fine line between that, and a couple of things have not been very smart.”
The 4-8 Phillies will start a four-game series with the 4-6 Reds on Thursday.
