It has the feeling of it all unraveling, doesn’t it?
First, it was the announcement by the Phillies on Tuesday afternoon that starting pitcher Jesus Luzardo, the very best pitcher in the sport for more than three months now, was being placed on the 15-day IL with shoulder inflammation that the team hoped would subside in time for him to make his next start.
While the team and Luzardo say they are confident he will be ready for the playoffs, it’s fair to be critical of that. It’s never good news when your best pitcher’s throwing shoulder is too sore to throw a baseball two weeks before the postseason.
The Phillies were 18-3 in his last 21 starts. Since May 14, Luzardo’s 1.93 ERA was second in the Majors, his 164 strikeouts ranked third, he was second in innings pitched (135), his .191 opponents’ batting average was fifth and his 0.98 WHIP was seventh-best.
It is a critical loss as the Phillies battle three other teams for one of the NL’s three wild card slots.
Then, the Phils followed that news by playing a dispiriting game against the last place Nationals in Washington. The bats were largely silent, Cristopher Sanchez had yet another lackluster start, and the bullpen gave up a big hit late in a 6-3 loss.
The Phillies are 4-8 in their last 12 games after a raucous August, further cementing the Jekyll and Hyde nature of this sometimes-great, sometimes-awful group of veterans.
They benefitted from outside help on Tuesday night, with the Cubs, Padres and Diamondbacks all also losing, but the whole thing feels exceedingly tenuous right now, but the Phils just lost their best starting pitcher for the home stretch, and his October availability remains a major question mark.
Is it time to panic?
Cristopher Sanchez, who earlier this year spun 50 2/3 scoreless innings, the third-longest mark in MLB history, has a 6.87 ERA over his last three starts and a 5.06 ERA in his last five. He has given up 8 or more hits in 4 of his last 6.
It’s a bad time for Sanchez to lose his way.
The lineup’s early-August dalliance with discipline has disappeared entirely, with a league-worst 6.4% walk rate in September, but this isn’t about one inopportune cold streak. The lineup has underperformed all season. Their season-long OPS+ of 90 is the worst in baseball.
That’s right, according to that metric, there is no offense in baseball worse than the Phillies’. They have just three players with a slugging percentage over .500 (Kyle Schwarber, Bryce Harper, Brandon Marsh), and Marsh’s .412 is barely over that mark. He’s also been, statistically, the worst player in baseball since the All Star break. Only two players (Schwarber and Harper) have at least 20 home runs.
So if you’re expecting the Phillies to slug their way through October like they did in ‘22, think again.
And then there’s the bullpen. Their 4.33 ERA is 21st in baseball, and there is no one you feel good about coming out of the ‘pen with a late lead and the game on the line, outside of Jhoan Duran. And he’s not infallible, now should he be expected to be.
Tuesday night’s game against the Nationals was a prime example of what ails this team. This was a matchup the Phillies simply had to win.
They had Sanchez, one of the best pitchers in baseball over the last two years, facing a decent but no longer spectacular Nationals lineup. The Phils’ offense, meanwhile, went up against a 23-year-old left-handed rookie named Jackson Kent, who after five innings had given up just three runs. He has a 6.40 ERA.
The Nationals have the worst bullpen in baseball, setting the all-time blown saves record last week. They pitched four shutout innings against the Phillies’ lineup of free swinging stars.
Sanchez vs. a rookie with a 6.40 ERA and the Major’s worst collection of relievers. In a pennant race.
The Phils had to win that one.
It’s fair to remember things felt like they were falling apart in September of 2022, too. They went 11-14 in the season’s final month and 3-3 in early October ahead of the playoffs, ultimately sneaking in as the third wild card. After a brutal three-game sweep at the hands of the Cubs in Wrigley Field in late September, the Phillies had lost 10 of 13 and appeared on their way to blowing a chance to break an 11-year postseason drought that had become the longest in the National League.
But they righted the ship at the last moment and snuck into the tournament. Magic happened.
That team succeeded in October without the weight of expectations on them. This team, even if they enter as a road wild card team, will not have the grace of being an underdog. No matter how they get into the playoffs, the only thing that will make anyone happy is a World Series.
The trend lines aren’t good for that to happen. A season-long underachieving offense, a starting rotation that might be falling apart, and a bullpen no one trusts does not establish a championship foundation.
It is all so tenuous, and nothing is guaranteed.
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