Phillies’ Lack of Right-Handed Production Hurting Them vs. Lefties

The Phillies lineup is a very simple group when you look at it on paper. A team that, when rolling, can be great, with two left-hander batters up top that are amongst the league’s best, as well as a speedster leadoff hitter who can be a hit machine.

After Trea Turner, Kyle Schwarber, and Bryce Harper, the rest of the lineup goes back and forth when it comes to being an elite-level hitter. A mix of lefties and righties who either struggle at one thing or struggle at multiple things.

However, one thing seems to be a common denominator with this team: they cannot seem to manufacture successful game plans against left-handed pitching. Relievers are one thing, but it’s the starting left-handed pitcher that is causing the Phillies to struggle this year.

The prime example came during the finale of the Phillies series against the Reds, with the Phillies losing 9-4 to Cincinnati, behind a solid 5.1 innings of work from lefty Andrew Abbott. Abbott allowed three runs, but the Phillies were blanked on hits for nearly the first four innings.

Nothing was going well. At-bats looked sloppy, nobody could work counts to get runners on, and even when the Phillies gained some energy during a three-run sixth, it wasn’t enough.

“We just weren’t able to really stop [the Reds], get our momentum going, which we kind of had it, but we never were able to sustain that they kept scoring,” Don Mattingly said Wednesday afternoon. “We just want to be as good as we can possibly be, force them to get hits to beat us, and basically, today that’s what they did.”

The Phillies have lost nine games this season against a left-handed starter, with the sole win coming against one of the worst full-time starters in the league, Kyle Freeland. The ERA from left-handed starters against the Phillies this season is 2.24, but if you take the Freeland game out, it’s a 1.70 ERA in 14 starts this year.

Against left-handed pitching, Philadelphia is batting .217. Against righties, they’re batting .238. The comparisons don’t stop there: they have 112 hits against left-handers compared to 280 against right-handers, and 20 home runs against lefties vs 42 against righties.

Now, MLB teams typically have better stats against right-handed pitchers than left-handed pitchers, but this is a stark contrast. It shows that the Phillies don’t have the necessary assets to handle when they face a left-hander, with not enough right-handed batters who can pick up the slack of the left-handers who struggle.

Outside of Harper and Schwarber, Brandon Marsh, Bryson Stott, and Justin Crawford all struggle against left-handed pitchers, and the everyday right-handers, the Alec Bohm, Edmundo Sosa, J.T. Realmuto, and Adolis Garcia, who are in the lineup against lefties, are not doing their jobs to help the team.

When you face left-handers, the righties have to pick up the slack, and the simple thing to say is the Phillies right-handers aren’t doing that. Is it because of a lack of talent? Can they not protect their stars up top, and it’s causing teams to game plan for it? Or is it from a lack of willingness to truly go out and improve that spot?

Bohm has been better after a truly terrible start to 2026, hitting in 11 straight games, with a well over .400 average and 1.200 OPS, but relying on him to solve your problems and be a consistent four-hitter behind Turner, Schwarber, and Harper isn’t the best strategy. We’ve seen in the past, and even this season, Bohm struggle in that spot, and it’s the reason that they’re mainly in this mess.

“I think the numbers in the four-spot weren’t very good last year for our whole team,” Dombrowski said last month, in the middle of the Phillies’ 10-game losing streak, about how the team has struggled to find a right-handed bat, one that could be the cleanup hitter behind their loaded top three. “So, whoever’s in that four-spot is going to have a big job to do. You really don’t have a No. 4 hitter at this time. Maybe Bohm will step back up. Maybe [Adolis] Garcia will do it.”

Bohm is trying to work his way back up, but the other one mentioned, Garcia, has instantly shown not to be the answer the Phillies had hoped he would be when he was brought in this past winter.

This season, Garcia is batting .207 with just four home runs and 14 RBIs. To put that into perspective, Edmundo Sosa, who has appeared in 20 fewer games than Garcia, has the same number of RBIs, and Crawford, who has been at the bottom of the Phillies order with 30 fewer at-bats than Garcia, has the same number of hits.

89 hitters have at least 170 at-bats this season, and Garcia is tied for the second least amount of RBIs. Chandler Simpson, the Tampa Bay Rays speeseter leadoff hitter, has the least at 12. That’s an even worse stat when you realize Garcia has been consistently penciled in at the top of the Phillies order all year. Even when he struggles, Mattingly is putting him in the two-hole, with a reason of “just trying to give him a little boost.”

Garcia has just flat-out not been the answer for the Phillies, who were hoping to bring a cheap spark to the middle of their order when they signed him to a one-year, $10 million deal. Filling in the hole of Nick Castellanos, the Phillies hoped to get a bounce-back player in Garcia, but that gamble doesn’t seem to be paying off.

Now it’s not the time for true panic; the Phillies are only 25-25. Mattingly still feels that this team is in a good spot just 50 games into the season, and that wins will come from this team with time.

“We’re fine,” Mattingly said. “We’re not going to win every day, I mean, I plan on winning every day, but it’s going to happen. There’s nothing in here that scares me that we’re not going to be the team we need to be.”

It’s nice to feel and hear the confidence from your skipper, but the reality is, this team needs a right-handed bat badly. Bohm and Garcia are both on expiring contracts this offseason, and moving Marsh or Stott to fix your right-handed problem this year is unlikely, so it seems that the Phillies may have to move off their starting third baseman or right fielder if they want to improve.

Bohm’s trade market is remote, but Garcia is expendable with his only $10 million price tag. Who the Phillies could get to play a corner outfield spot is unknown, but if Garcia doesn’t improve soon, the Phillies have to do something to help this team out against lefties.

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