Inconsistency Continues as Phillies Drop Third Consecutive Series to Open Second Half: ‘It Hasn’t Been Our Best’

We’re nine games into the second half of the 2026 MLB season, and to say that the Phillies have issues would be an understatement.

The Phils have 56 games left and are currently sitting as the No. 2 Wild Card team in the National League. They’ve come a long way since starting the season 9-19, firing their manager, Rob Thomson, and looking like their championship window was closed, but the issues that struck the Phillies early on in the year seem to be coming back to haunt the team now.

Following the All-Star break, the Phillies were fortunate to get three straight series at home to open up the second half. Unfortunately, however, the three series were against the Mets (their biggest rival), the Dodgers (the best team in baseball), and the Yankees (the second-best team in the American League record-wise).

Now, the excuse for the losing streak and the recent dip in production shouldn’t be “well, these teams are great, you only lost a couple of series, it’s fine,” because in reality, it’s not fine. This season, the Phillies are 11-26 against teams that are currently in a playoff spot across the entire MLB. They’ve won just one series against a team that would currently be in the postseason, and that was against the White Sox back in early June.

This team refuses to get out of its tired ways of producing runs, refusing to work counts against pitchers and get to teams’ bullpens early in series. Look at examples this season, like when Jacob Misiorowski tossed a 15-strikeout complete-game shutout back in June, or Cam Schlittler the other night tossing 7.1 innings, allowing just three hits and striking out 12, or Justin Wrobleski throwing 6.1 innings of one-run ball. All three of those teams were set up to win those series easily because they got outstanding performances from their studs.

Night in and night out, you don’t know what you’re getting from this team. One night you’ll see the best hitting team you’ve seen this decade, and the next night you’ll see a three-hit shutout from the offense that strikes out 10+ times and doesn’t walk.

“We haven’t really scored, but the one thing you can kind of rest assured: nobody’s going up there not trying to get hits,” interim manager Don Mattingly said after scoring one run for the third time in four nights on Saturday. “We’re not going into the game, not trying to score. We are in a spot where we haven’t scored, and we haven’t swung the bats great. But we’ve got to continue to work.”

This group constantly falls into this spot season after season, and it eventually reflects in poor playoff performances. There are 162 games to play in a season, but we’re a week away from the MLB trade deadline, and after that, it’s 50 games with whatever team we have to put up or shut up.

It’s not a total lack of effort, as the Phillies players aren’t caring when they’re at the plate or in the field, but it feels as though they don’t do anything to change how they can win a game. They’ve scored one or fewer runs in five of their last nine games, and they lead baseball with 25 games this season scoring one run or fewer. They currently, as a team, have the worst on-base percentage in the entire MLB.

“It hasn’t been our best. I think we know that we want to play better,” Trea Turner said Saturday night. “I think it’s just kind of going back to what Donnie said early on when he got the job: it’s just three hours of competing and don’t let your foot off the gas. And I don’t think it’s a lack of effort, but I think we need to get that back a little bit.”

The real key thing is: will a performance like Sunday night’s, where the entire lineup is moving through innings and posting double-digit runs and hits, continue into the series against other good teams?

“It was really what we needed tonight,” Mattingly said after the Phillies posted 11 runs in the finale against the Yankees, the first time the Phillies have scored 11 runs or more since June 23. “Kind of good at-bats up and down, kind of what they’re capable of, where you go up and down the lineup, and guys are just forcing guys to make pitches. It was good to see. It’s what we’re capable of.”

The Phillies are capable of performances like that, but the feeling from this group this season is that despite showing signs of being that kind of ballclub, they have issues that just seem unsolvable with two months to go on the season.

As things stand, despite their record, the Phillies are not one or two trades away from turning this team around and becoming a World Series favorite. The issues with this team are in-house, and they can be solved with a little more effort and will to play a different style of baseball.

This Phillies team is hell-bent on big home runs and huge offensive outputs, and dying on the fact that when they’re hot, nobody can beat them. However, we’ve seen in the past that that strategy fails time and time again.

Great pitching from your starters came only do so much; Exhibit A and B this past week in a 2-1 loss against the Dodgers, where Zack Wheeler tossed seven innings of two-run ball and nine strikeouts, and Friday night’s game against the Yankees, where Jesus Luzardo made one mistake, a solo bomb to Paul Goldschmidt, and picked up the loss after throwing seven innings, striking out nine and walking just one batter.

Going from scoring one run in the first two games of a series and then turning around to score 11 in the finale isn’t a good thing. It shows the lack of consistency with this club to come out and give the same performance day after day. They feel like a team that just assumes they’re getting in the dance, and if they get hot, they’ll win the World Series, when in reality, getting into the playoffs is not a guarantee with a loaded National League, and they’ve shown that when the lights get bright in October, this group can’t finish the job.

For the longest time, the mindset behind the Phillies has been that if they’re there, they have the team and players to go all the way and win the World Series. Whether a trade, a call-up, or whatever move they want to make can get fans back on that boat, but right now, this team is flawed in massive ways that can’t be fixed with just a trade deadline and 56 games to go before the postseason.

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