Phillies have run out of time; only questions remain: ‘It’s always frustrating’

With two outs in the bottom of the eighth inning and the Atlanta Braves leading 5-1, reigning Cy Young winner Chris Sale emerged from the bullpen. He was set to make his first relief appearance since closing out Game 5 of the 2018 World Series at Dodger Stadium.

The 37-year-old was tasked with recording four outs. His first was Bryce Harper.

Sale threw him four straight sliders, getting two swings and misses to start the at-bat. Harper held off on the third, which was well out of the zone. Then he chased the fourth. The pitch was way low and outside, and it got by Drake Baldwin. Harper did not flinch. He bent down, taking his knee pad off to prepare to head to his position for the final time of the season. Once he realized the ball was past and started running to first, it was too late.

“I didn’t see it,” Harper said in the quiet visiting clubhouse under Truist Park.

It is ironic because it seems almost hallucinatory for us not to see this outcome from the Phillies in their 6-2 loss in Atlanta in winner-take-all Game 3. The offense did not show up again for most of the series; the base running failed; the defense was costly; the starting pitching suffered in Game 3; and the bullpen ravaged the run. Familiar issues, aye?

It is another early end to October for the Phillies. Each year it keeps getting shorter and shorter. And the players are getting older and older.

“It’s always frustrating,” Kyle Schwarber said postgame. “From every postseason I’ve been in, it always hurts when you’re not the last team standing.

“It’s just as frustrating this year as it was last year and the year before that.”

This is now the fifth postseason for this core. They have gone from losing the World Series to the NLCS, to back-to-back NLDS losses, now down to the Wild Card. From the top to the bottom. Since Game 6 of the 2023 NLCS against the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Phillies are 3-10 in the postseason, averaging three runs a game with a slash line of .203/.286/.337 and an OPS of .623.

It really feels like this nucleus is running out of time. Perhaps the window shut Thursday night in the first inning when Michael Harris II deposited Aaron Nola‘s low 2-0 sinker into the first row in right field. Or was it that night in late October against Arizona in 2023?

The older the players get, the more the decline becomes real. J.T. Realmuto, 35, had a career-worst season, finishing the regular season with a .205 average. Trea Turner, 33, had another down year. Harper and Schwarber will be 34 by Opening Day 2027. Zack Wheeler is 36 entering his final contracted season, and Nola is 33. The daycare is now in their 30s. This was the most up-and-down year of this team.

Is there an answer? Is this concerning?

“I don’t know,” Harper responded. “I can’t really answer that question. We haven’t played the games for next year or anything else. Each year is so different than the year before. So, I don’t really put stock into years before or what happened or anything else. This is a brand new team.”

If each year is something different, then how come the results have been the same every season?

Here is the Phillies’ offense in their elimination game the last five postseasons:

• 2026 WC: two runs, 6-for-31 (.194)
• 2025 NLDS: one run, 4-for-37 (.108)
• 2024 NLDS: one run, 4-for-31 (.129)
• 2023 NLCS: two runs, 5-for-31 (.161)
• 2022 WS: one run, 3-for-29 (.103)
• In total, that is 1.4 runs per game, 22-for-159 (.138)

And it is all in the same fashion. Chasing pitches out of the zone, playing hero ball, and not scoring runners on base. Where is the hope coming from?

“There’s definitely the talent in this room to win,” Realmuto said. “If you watched us play all year, no matter who we played, we weren’t outmatched. It’s about execution. It’s not about the age and the years. We know we still have the talent to win.”

Beyond just the postseason, this offense was inconsistent all year long. They started 9-19, had their manager fired, who led them to one of the most successful periods in the franchise’s history, showed spurts of light, and really took off in August. Rather than slugging the ball, the Phillies worked good counts, got base hits, and drove runners in. As soon as the calendar flipped to September, that vanished, and they looked like that 9-19 immoral baseball team again.

It is not easy when your leadoff hitter, Turner, struggled to set the pace all year long. Turner posted a .242 average in the regular season, with a .297 OBP and .675 OPS. All were his lowest in a full season in his career. In the last three postseasons, Turner is 8-for-43, good for a .186 AVG, just one extra-base hit, and four RBIs. Turner is owed $190 million over the next seven years by the Phillies.

“[I] got a lot of work to do,” Turner said. “Kind of just go over everything and figure out as much as I can, find answers. See what I did bad. But I feel like, you know, I think this year’s the biggest question mark for me offensively in a long time. And I gotta figure that out. So, I’m definitely gonna have a lot of work to do there, and I’ll do it.”

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The Phillies were managed by Don Mattingly for 137 games, including the postseason. He led them to an 80-57 record as the interim manager. He did so with a cool, laid-back approach. Not every move he made was perfect, but he got the Phillies to the postseason, and they won a lot of games with him.

“I feel like [Mattingly] did a great job for us,” Schwarber said. “When we were in that tough spot, and I think he was able to get us to turn that page.

“I felt like his demeanor was just great for us. And he was able to get us to move on… Even when things got hard, the way that he was able to keep things at an even keel pace for us, I think that was huge for us to focus on a day at a time and a task on a time.”

READ MORE FROM GAME 3:

Phillies Offense Pulls Final Disappearing Act of 2026

Now the weird part about it is the Phillies hired the 65-year-old baseball legend to be their bench coach. An extra opinion for Rob Thomson to lean on. Mattingly made it clear when he came in that he had no interest in managing again.

Well, 28 games in, he was writing the lineup card.

More peculiar, the Phillies never wanted him to be manager either. He was the backup plan when former Boston Red Sox manager, under president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski, declined the offer.

Just hours after their Game 3 loss, Bob Nightingale of USA Today reported that Mattingly will not return as the manager in 2027. The team will announce the decision as a mutual parting and will offer Mattingly a chance to stay in the organization, perhaps as an advisor.

Mattingly never wanted it, never was the first choice, and did not even get a night to lose the job.

“Just appreciate the effort of really everybody in the organization,” Mattingly said. “From the training staff to the players, the coaches, just everything that they went through from really the start of spring training and preparing for spring training and, you know, getting through a season. A lot of time, a lot of work. Obviously it doesn’t end the way we want it to. If you don’t win the last game, it’s a crash landing no matter what.”

The end of Mattingly’s tenure is merciless, too. The clubhouse raved about Mattingly postgame, praising his presence and how he handled and turned around a room full of talented high-level players. However, the Phillies are moving in a different direction, which became clear months ago.

“I loved being in Philly this year,” Mattingly said. “Actually liked playing in that environment. I like the environment. It’s a rough environment, but it’s good.”

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Back on Jan. 20, when members of the media were able to speak to a few Phillies, Thomson was asked about the 2026 roster and the narrative that the Phillies were running it back.

“We’re gonna have three new relievers. We got a new right fielder. [Justin] Crawford is gonna get every chance to play. We probably got a rookie starting pitcher in [Andrew] Painter. We got Otto Kemp, who wasn’t here at the start of [2025],” he responded. “So we’re turning over 20 to 25% of our roster. So, if you think that’s running it back, then I can’t help you.”

Here we are, a little over eight months later, and it was the same exact result. Only one of those three new relievers made the postseason roster. That right fielder, Adolis Garcia, suffered a season-ending right latissimus dorsi tear on June 10. Kemp lasted about three weeks in the majors.

To make matters worse, not a single trade deadline acquisition made the Phillies’ postseason roster. While Luis Arraez helped the offense stride in August, the front office failed again to acquire a needle-moving pitcher at the deadline, whether a reliever or starter. It killed the bullpen down the stretch of the season, in turn, forcing the Phillies to clinch on the final day of the season, impoverishing their Wild Card pitching plan.

This organization failed to effectively retool over the offseason. It all came crashing down in Game 3. It was the total culmination. This was supposed to be it. This was the final run with this core. Now, there have to be major changes with a new manager.

“Obviously, we had the guys who are part of that core group that we are,” Harper said. “I’d imagine this team is gonna look a lot different next year. With the guys that are kind of leaving this clubhouse. So we’ll see.”

The Phillies will, of course, have a new manager, which will likely be Cora. He could bring along a new staff. It seems as if Phillies hitting coach Kevin Long has run his course here. Arraez, Alec Bohm, Edmundo Sosa, Garcia, Jose Alvarado, and Tim Mayza are the team’s key free agents.

Bohm has been through it all. From a near-Rookie of the Year 2020 campaign to a turbulent defensive and offensive run, he says he “hasn’t given it a ton of thought” when asked about the offseason.

“To be honest, I have no idea what to expect,” Bohm said. “I’d love to be back [with the Phillies]. If they would have me back.”

At the end of the day, if the third overall pick by the Phillies in the 2018 MLB Draft never puts on the red pinstripes, he was a core member of the most successful periods in team history. While a lot of times coming up short in the postseason hitting behind Harper, the Phillies may not make the postseason this year without him, and certainly do not win Game 2 over Atlanta without his 10th-inning wall-scraper.

“Definitely feel like we have unfinished business here,” Bohm said, “and I want to be a part of the team that gets it done for sure.”

Now, what else can they do? It would be insanity if Dombrowski and co. just ran it back again. Right? How long have we been saying that for?

Maybe they could move on from Brandon Marsh, who was one of baseball’s worst hitters in the second half and did not start Thursday night. Or Bryson Stott, who has elite defense, but is 23-for-126 in the playoffs now for his career, a .183 average.

Something has to be done with the bullpen. This is now two straight postseasons without Jhoan Duran throwing a single pitch with a lead in the ninth inning.

But they do not have much time. We are racing into the Dec. 1 labor lockout. We do not know how long that will last. No one does. We know it is going to be a long one. Harper would not even entertain the question postgame.

The Phillies proved to us again that they were who we thought they were. This team is not scary anymore. They do not have that postseason bravado they once had. They are hardly competitive.

Do you blow it up? Not when you have Harper contracted for another five years. Turner for seven. Schwarber for four. Realmuto for two. Those four have roughly $102.5 million attached between them for 2027.

Where do you go?

What do you do?

Only one way now.

Darkness.

Again.

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