It May Be Time For The Phillies To Fire Kevin Long
Phillies hitting coach Kevin Long during batting practice before the Phillies play the St. Louis Cardinals in game two of the National League Wild Card Series on Saturday, October 8, 2022. Credit: Yong Kim / The Philadelphia Inquirer
Kevin Long, it might be time to start looking for a new job
After starting the year 7-2 and taking two of three games from the reigning World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers, the Phillies lost two of three games against rival Atlanta Braves and the St. Louis Cardinals. During their six-game road trip, the Phillies scored just 14 runs and were shut out twice,
You can place blame on guys like Brandon Marsh, who on multiple occasions failed to provide any effort for the Phillies on this trip Alec Bohm, who continues to struggle. You can blame every hitter for the Phillies, pretty much not named Kyle Schwarber, for the absolute dumpster fire performance they showed this past week.
Instead, I choose to blame the guy who has been in charge of the Philles offense for the entirety of the Rob Thomson era, Kevin Long. Long was hired by former Phillies manager Joe Girardi back in 2022, reuniting with former Nationals Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber. Girardi was fired after only a few months, and Thomson took over, keeping Long on staff. Since then, the Phillies’ offense has been an up-and-down roller coaster, as at times, the team looks on fire and the best in baseball, and at other times, can’t hit a pitch to save their life.
Most notably, the offense has stalled out has been the major reason why this core hasn’t been able to win a World Series, as the bats get cold in the playoffs, and the team can’t recover. But through all that, Long has stuck around. Is it because he’s boys with a lot of the players, or is he a good coach? I think his relationship with Harper and co. is the reason why he hasn’t been canned.
If Long were any other hitting coach, he would have been fired by now. There’s no excuse for his inability to properly game-plan and not change ways of play on the fly. Long’s philosophy is just to keep swinging for the long ball, the bats will eventually get hot. News flash, that’s not how this game works.
You see it in how the team has gone about the game this year. Opposing teams’ starting pitchers have diced the Phillies all year long. Out of the 60 runs scored this year for the Phillies, 32 of them have come in the seventh inning or later. It takes them forever to get runs on the board, and because of it, it’s forcing out starting pitchers to have to worry about being perfect. The pressure gets put on them to not let up runs, or else the game gets out of reach.
Struggling and not changing game plans in the regular season is one thing, but it’s been shown that Long is so stubborn to make his way work that the Phillies have wasted prime years of this team on not winning a championship.
The other big gripe I have with Long is the inability to fix multiple players on this team, and at the top of the list is Brandon Marsh. Marsh was brought to Philadelphia in 2022 and was seen as a project player who had the potential to be a great player. Once he arrived, they reworked his swing and turned him into a better ball player than the one he was in Los Angeles.
But as the years have gone on, it seems like Marsh’s play has gotten worse. He batted .277 in 2023 and .249 in 2024, and has recorded 140+ strikeouts in both those seasons. And now in 2025, it looks like Marsh has hit a new low. To kick off the 2025 season, Marsh is batting .111 on the year, recording only four hits, and has to recorded a hit yet in April. He’s a constant strikeout machine. His strikeout rate is up to 31.8% on the year, and at the rate he’s swinging, it’s only going to get worse.
It has come to a point where Marsh is going to get boo’d out of the ballpark when he make his next at-bat at home and while he is to take some blame for this, Long is just as responsible. Long has allowed Marsh to just continue to go about his same routine for the past three years, and because of it, his discipline at the plate is god awful.
Instead of just allowing Marsh to go up to the plate and just hoping he gets out of his slump, why not switch things up? Shorten his approach, try to move the ball around, work counts, and walk more. Nope, just continue to allow him to strike out and struggle.
Marsh isn’t the only one on the team who is struggling like this. Alec Bohm is another guy who is struggling to get going this year. While a lot of his battle may be mental, Long isn’t helping him, but isn’t getting on Bohm for counting to swing at the first pitch of at-bats. Long encourages it and feels that Bohm will swing his way out of this slump. That isn’t working, and with the already broken relationship Bohm has with this city, Long isn’t doing him any favors.
Now I’m all for being aggressive, but there comes a point where, as a team, you have to put your pride aside and do what’s best to win. Right now, I think the Phillies should shake things up and start fresh, and in my opinion, that’s firing K Long. I get it, certain guys may be happy, but look what happened in 2022. After firing Girardi, this team knew it was their fault, and they stepped up and made the World Series. I’m not saying that firing Long is going to solve all their problems, but it seems like something has to change for this team to get back on track.
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Matt Brown
Matt has been a Philadelphia sports fan all his life and spent four years at Penn State University majoring in Broadcast Journalism and minoring in Sports Studies. He previously covered Penn State’s field hockey, men’s and women’s basketball, and baseball teams while writing for a Penn State blog called Onward State. He has now covered the Phillies, Eagles, and Sixers for Philly Sports Reports since October 2024 and wants to pursue a career in Sports Journalism.
