What's Wrong With the Phillies Right Now? | Hittin' Season

From WHYY, it is hitting season. Hey there, podcast pals. I'm John Stolnes from The Good Fight. You can follow me on X and Blue Sky at John Stolnes. And coming up, we're gonna recap Phil's Diamondbacks from the weekend at Citizens Bank Park. Bad baseball right now, gang. It's not just us saying it. The Phillies themselves are calling it what it is. They are playing some bad baseball right now, and that is resulting in them losing some games they should win and just being a really unpleasant watch right now. But hopefully this will be a pleasant listen as we talk about it and we commiserate. So we'll talk about some of the bad base running we saw this weekend. We'll talk about a lineup that seems to only be able to score one inning per game over the last week. And we'll take a look ahead to the Cubs series coming up here starting on Monday night. Joining me to do that is Liz Roscher, of course the editor of Sabre's Baseball Research Journal. Follow her on X and Blue Sky at Liz Roscher. Liz, how are you? Oh, peachy keen, jelly bean. This was such a fun weekend of baseball to watch. So glad I made time on my schedule three times. Yeah, it's a good thing, it's good to say. And if you wanna know why Phillies fans are ornery right now, it's again, not just because, well, they're off to a slow first 15 games. That's not what we're talking about here. As everybody knows, and we talked about it on the last podcast, this is not just a one-year thing. And so that's why everybody's a little bit testy right now. Justin Clue won't be joining us here on this edition of the podcast. He'll be joining me for the midweek edition of the pod, where we'll talk a little bit about the Cubs series. But Liz and I wanted to spend some quality time together today talking about the Diamondbacks and the Phillies and the nonsense we all saw. How much we don't like them right now. That's right. Look, here's the thing. For everybody listening and for everybody out there who watched this team play, none of us likes this team right now. There, I don't know that they like themselves right now. It is a, it is a holy. No, it is an unlikable brand of baseball this team is playing right now. It is mediocre baseball, which is why they are seven and eight entering this three-game series against the Cubs. They have not played good teams here in the early going. There have been no juggernauts. Of course, there really are no juggernauts in baseball right now. Everybody in the league is like no better than four games over 500 and no worse than like four games under 500. It's a league full of parody right now. I saw today the Twins have the best record in the American League at this point. So there's not a whole, and the Twins were earmarked for 95 losses this year. Okay, so there are not a lot of grand proclamations that anybody's prepared to make about the Phillies or anybody else in baseball. What we can just tell you is that it's been really awful baseball to watch. Every aspect of the game, the Phillies are just finding way to make mistakes. Bryce Harper was asked about it after the game on Sunday and just said, it's bad baseball. And he has to include himself in that little moniker, in that little description of the type of baseball the Phillies are playing. They are tied with the Nationals right now in the NL East for the third best record in the division. The Braves are 10 and six, playing some pretty good ball themselves right now. The Marlins are eight and eight. The Mets are seven and nine. But the Phillies have the worst run differential of any team in the National League East at the moment at negative 16. By the way, Atlanta is out to a plus 46 in the run differential so far. So, yeah. Great. But this should tell you all you need to know. And we're gonna kind of start off with, well, we'll get to the offense in just a second. I wanna start off with some of the, just the awful base running that we saw on Sunday and just leading to the overall terrible play on the field. We saw early in the game, Bryce Harper, as the Phillies offense was struggling once again. Harper, one of the few bats who has been hot over the last nine games or so, turns a lead-off single, ground ball up the middle, standard, you know, you see it, you've seen it 10 million times in your life, a standard ground ball up the middle for a single. And Harper, you could just see it out of the dugout. He had Toro, Toro nostril flat flares. Like, he was just, he knew as soon as he hit it, I'm gonna stretch this into a double. It was thrown out by five feet. I mean, it wasn't even close. Everyone saw it coming and he got booed lustily off the field because we've seen Bryce Harper run himself into a lot of outs over the years. And it was just, it was just silly. It was just stupid and it reeked of desperation and everybody could see it. No one wants to see, they wanna see, even if the Phillies are desperate, no one wants to see them be desperate. Everyone wants to see them being calm. And when they do stuff like this, it fans the flame of angry fans. Angry fans who wanna see better baseball from their team. And almost every team out there has seen better baseball from their team in their first 15 games in the Phillies. Well, and the Phillies have no rope with the fan base right now. They've just run out of rope. It's- Nor should they. This is, they did what they did in the off season. They knew how it was perceived. So this is their doing. They have to deal with it. But like, whew. Yeah, well, and that's the pressures on these guys and they're playing like it. We saw it in the eighth inning when Brandon Marsh got doubled off first base on an infield pop-up. And that's what Bryce Harper was referring to when he talked about bad baseball. The team was playing bad baseball. He was talking about the Brandon Marsh getting caught off at first. And that is just unexcusable. Rob Thompson after the game said, even though you're stealing or you're taking off on the pitch, on the third step, you're supposed to look in. And Marsh didn't look in. He just kept chugging. That's a fundamental error. After the game, Rob Thompson also said he didn't even talk to Bryce Harper about trying to extend the single into a double because Harper knew what he did was wrong. Like, I get that Bryce Harper is not your six-year-old son who you've told not to play with the knives and yet continues to play with the knives. You don't take them away and say, well, I decided not to scold him because he knows better. I mean, I get it. Bryce Harper is a grown man. He's the leader of the team. But I tell you what, that comment really struck as a manager who is not really pushing all of the right buttons in terms of getting guys to play fundamentally sound baseball. I mean, I don't know what you do with Bryce Harper in that situation, but that's, I mean, that sounds like a weak statement to me. It does. And this is, I mean, and I think we've known this is how Thompson has run his team, has run his clubhouse. And I think these are the questions we have to start asking this year. We've asked them throughout the last few years, but whether Rob Thompson's the right man for this job. But I think we've seen a continued, I think we're starting to see at least, continued results of his really laissez-faire attitude. His acceptance that the stars are stars, they know what they're supposed to do, they don't need anything really, they don't need me to tell them what to or not to do. Like, maybe that is true, but things don't seem to be working well, you know? Things haven't seemed to be working the way they should have for several seasons now, at least clubhouse-wise, and it's something we've constantly commented on. And now it's becoming really, really obvious that I think this is a problem, that it's affecting things that we don't know. And having the players rule the clubhouse isn't always the best, especially when they're all very samey guys like Bryce Harper, GTO Real Muto, you know, these guys who cut the same sort of figure personality-wise and personally. It can be, I imagine it's not the most fun all the time. We have heard over the years, whenever the Phillies get into a rut with a manager, and you've seen it online, and it's some of the older generation of fans, who remember when Dallas Green took over the 1980 Phillies? And everybody likes to go back to that, because that worked really well. I mean, you had a team that was loaded with stars, had been to three straight seasons in the playoffs, lost in the first round of the playoffs all three years, missed the playoffs entirely in 1979 because they were hit with a rash of injuries, and at the end of the 79 season, a player-friendly manager in Danny Ozark is let go by the team, and the team brings in a fire-branded Dallas Clark, Dallas Green, who just, Dallas Clark, Dallas Green, who decides to just, yeah, I don't know why my, I suddenly just morphed back into my 2005 fantasy football team there for a second, I'm not sure why. Tight end Dallas Clark of the Annapolis Colts. Dallas Green comes in, and just starts screaming the paint off the walls, and purposely trying to shake up a clubhouse of really talented but complacent players. And I don't think that this group necessarily is complacent. I think they're trying to do too much, and Rob Thompson has said that, all the players are saying that, Trey Turner said that after the game on Sunday, we heard Kyle Schwarber say that after the game on Saturday, when he was asked if the team. Sorry, go ahead. No, I was just saying, when he was asked if the team really needed that big four-run inning, it's like, I don't wanna say we needed it, because if we start chasing that kind of thing, you know, then bad things start to happen. But when you hear Rob Thompson kind of approach things the way he has, and Justin has talked about this a lot with us on the podcast, you see how the Phillies are kind of messy now, like to get messier and messier with each passing year. You know, Dallas Green's not walking through that door. Larry Bowe is definitely not walking through that door. But you do wonder at a certain point, and I'm not advocating for this right now, because I've always been a big Rob Thompson guy, and I think you've been supportive of Rob Thompson. Justin has largely been as well. We believe he's a good manager, but there comes a time, if a manager and a team have kind of run its course, and it's time to bring in a different voice, and I don't know that we're there yet, but I just want the question, I want the possibility to be out there, because there was something to be said for what Dallas Green did in 1980. And it doesn't work all the time for every situation, like so many fans wanna believe that it does. You can't always just push the Dallas Green button, and all of a sudden you're on your way to a championship. But these situations are similar. And how Rob Thompson came in is definitely impacting everyone, because they saw the last time they got rid of a manager, let's do it again. I'm like, it doesn't work. Doesn't work that way more than once, honestly. The fact that it worked once is a freaking miracle. Yeah. We all know that. Yeah, and we forget Rob Thompson came in middle of the season for Ryan Sandberg, as a calmer voice, or a more competent voice than the one that was in- Joe Girardi. Yeah, oh, Girardi, yes. Who did I, Ryan Sandberg. Wow, I'm two for two today on this opening segment. Really good stuff, John. I mean, I thought you might mention Pete McKinnon, because I heard on the broadcast a couple of days ago that Pete McKinnon, his glorious head of hair, went through some surgery recently, and they were apparently worried about him. And so they said on the broadcast, he's back watching the game with his wife, Nancy, I think. And they were so happy that he's well and doing great. I'm like, oh God, I had no idea. I mean, David Lopes just died, and I'm like, someone hold on to these Phillies coaches. Please, if we, I can't, I don't wanna, there's some I can't lose. Personally, I cannot lose them. Charlie Manuel cannot go anywhere. Please find somebody to take care of Charlie Manuel. I mean, Charlie, I think, has been around the team the last few days, too. He's around the batting cage and stuff over the course of the week. Yeah, very cool. Billy Boa? No, he can't go. Are you kidding me? Nope. I'll die. I will personally die. So, I mean, I guess that's kind of, you know, when you've got fundamental issues like this, when the team has struggled with fundamental issues, it does point back to the management and the coaching, whether it's the hitting coach or the manager. And I'll point to another two situations from Sunday's game, but we have seen this a lot this year, and we've seen this especially in October, and that is the Phillies' inability to convert runs when they are presented with incredible opportunities to do so. Bryson, two times in the game on Sunday, the Phillies had first and third with nobody out and failed to score both times. Now, the first time was in the inning where they scored their four runs, and then they proceeded to, after getting those four runs, have first and third with nobody out. Blow the game open. They're getting ready to blow the game open, and they have Bryson Stott, Adolis Garcia, and Alec Bohm coming to the plate as your next hitters here. I think you're four, five, and six in this game, or five, six, seven, maybe it was. Yeah, five, six, seven. Bryson Stott, Adolis Garcia, and Alec Bohm strand those runners in the sixth inning, and then Bryson Stott does it again in the eighth inning along with Adolis Garcia. It's just like Stott was too passive in the sixth inning, lets the ball right down the middle, which is what he does. He lets first pitch strikes go by. He almost never takes a strike. I mean, he swings at a strike first. He almost always takes a strike. He had been trying to change that at the start of the season. He had been swinging more early in the count. That has since stopped, and then he gets himself into a situation where he's chasing out of the strike zone, which is what he did first and third, nobody on in the sixth. He pulls an outside pitch, a weak grounder to second. They throw Bryce Harper out at home, gets him caught in a rundown. Adolis Garcia pops a pitch up on the first pitch that he sees for the second out on the infield fly rule, and then Alec Bohm lines out the center field. Rally in the sixth is over. It didn't feel as bad because you'd scored there, but you kind of knew that might bite them in the rear end. Especially because- As soon as you saw it happen, you're like, this is the rest of the game, isn't it? As soon as you saw them lose the magic from those four runs, you're like, this is the rest of the game. I'm so glad they scored here because there's nothing happening for the rest. And that's how it works. And well, then they're down in the eighth inning because Jose Alvarado has a bad outing, but you get first and third with nobody out again, but you get the same guys up. Bryce and Stott, Adolis Garcia, and they never got to Alec Bohm because Bryce and Stott swings at the first pitch way out of the strike zone, down and in. Takes a ball, and then on a one-one fastball, and I'm talking, Liz, middle-middle, 96-mile-an-hour fastball, he fouls it off. And now you're down in the count. Now it's one and two. Now you gotta protect. And Bryce and Stott strikes out on a pitch out of the strike zone. And in a bat where it seemed like he was trying to correct what he did in the sixth inning and overcompensated in the eighth inning. And then Adolis Garcia gets ahead in the count three and one and then on a pitch way, way up and in, hits the ball two in the air to the second baseman who doubles off Brandon Marsh, who's not paying attention. That's a ball game. And it's just, we've seen this over and over in the playoffs, where they get runners on third and less than two outs and can't bring them home. Because they do rely on the home runs so much with this team. When everybody's hitting bombs, it's great. But when they're not hitting bombs, they really have a hard time. And you've gotta find that mix of home runs and being able to string some things together. Yeah, productive hits. Like, man, I feel like they did end up relying a lot on Kyle Schwarber last year. And he's gonna hit a lot of home runs this year. I have no doubt about that. But he can't do it all again. And he can't do it all himself. It's really frustrating. I mean, looking at what the Phillies' stats are looking like, just the individual players, it is a depressing lineup right now. It's just depressing looking. I, God. Yeah. Adonis Garcia's hitting 204. Kyle Schwarber is hitting 212, but that's not necessarily the worst. But he also has almost doubled the amount of strikeouts of anybody on the team. Yeah. Yeah, Schwarber's giving you a little bit of the power. Bryce Harper's been hot. Justin Crawford remains red hot. Trey Turner picked it up a little bit this week. So you've got 9-1-2-3. I'm sorry, 9-1-2. Yeah, 9-1-2-3 are hitting right now. But nobody else in the lineup is. The Phillies, four through eight hitters are hitting a combined 185. That's four, five, six, seven, and eight in the lineup. Five of your hitters. Your five hitters in the middle of the lineup are hitting a combined 185 with a 257 on-base percentage and a 542, not slugging percentage, but OPS, all our last in Major League Baseball. And so we're having all these conversations about, well, you know, maybe we'll change the lineup and we'll have somebody else hit cleanup. You know, let's have Adonis Garcia hit cleanup. Like I said, Adonis Garcia is barely hitting over 200. He's got two home runs and a 631 OPS. Okay, well, let's put Alec Baum back there. He's even worse. A 148 average. He had his opening day home run and one double. Those are the only extra base hits he's had so far. He's got a 455 OPS. And then JT Real Muto is hitting 212 with two doubles, a homer, one RBI on the season for JT Real Muto thus far with a 714 OPS. Folks, it doesn't matter who's hitting fourth on this team. They have five guys in the lineup, none of whom can hit. You can switch them around if you want to, and if you're Rob Thompson, sure, fine. Adonis in the four hole, try it. But, you know, it's just, when they start hitting, they'll start hitting, but it doesn't, it just, it really doesn't matter. It's not right now, man. Yeah, it's not right now. The other weird thing, Liz, is this feast or famine nature of the offense. Like, they're scoring in just one inning of every game. So, in their last 46 innings, so this is the 20 inning scoreless streak coming into this weekend. And then the three games against, who did they play? Arizona, just flew right out of my head. They played 46 innings. They've scored in three of those 46 innings. Cole Weintraub of NBC Sports Philadelphia noted it's the first time they've had a stretch like this in September of 2016. And they've also been held scoreless in 67 of their last 76 innings. That's a lot. That's so many. 10 years since they've done that. On Sunday, they'd scored in one of the nine innings they played. On Saturday, they scored in one of the eight innings they played. Friday, it was one of nine. Wednesday, zero of nine. Tuesday, zero of nine. Monday, two of nine. Sunday, one of nine. So, only one game out of the last seven, they score in more than one inning in that game. I just, I can't explain it. I mean, they have that big four run outburst and then that's it. Well, I don't know what's happening. I mean, there's something to be said. I don't know. Like, I can imagine someone, I'm trying to think of a manager these days that would go in and like throw a table or something or yell, and I'm like, the only one I could come up with, like Ozzie Guillen. Get Ozzie Guillen back here. Get him back. I mean, honestly, get this group a Latino manager that they could barely understand. Can you imagine? Give it to him and let him say, sink or swim, guys. This is your manager. I've decided this is your manager. And if you don't work with them, you don't have to play. We can put you on the bench and I will put stinky players in your place. That's what I want. If I'm being honest, I would love to see Ozzie Guillen make a comeback and be like, no, Bryce Harper works for me. I'm sorry. That would probably, I could retire from baseball fandom. I might be able to at that moment. Well, I mean, that would be something to see. I mean, I can't, I'm trying to imagine. I'm not saying it's actually gonna work. No, never in a million years. It's a fantasy that I'm concocting. Never in a million years, but I do wonder, you know, at what point decisions are made with regard to managers and coaches. Like they haven't, this is not a horrific start to the season. Like they're not, this is an ugly start, but they're seven and eight, right? They've somehow managed to win seven games this year, which is really kind of amazing that they've managed to win seven games the way they've played this year. And I think part of what we're seeing is that this poor offense is affecting their defense. It's affecting their base running. I mean, they had a horrible defensive series in San Francisco last week. They played a little bit better defense this weekend against the Diamondbacks, but they just, they've been, they haven't done any one thing well. I mean, you look at the starting rotation, that's been uneven. You know, one guy will have a phenomenal outing his first time out, and then the next outing, he gets blown up. And then the next time out, he lights out again. Like the starting rotation has been kind of all over the place. You know, it's been, it's, all aspects of the game are really rickety right now. And there's really nothing the Phillies can hang their hat on. And that's where, you know, again, these same guys together on the same team trying to get over the same hump, you know, is, is, is the history, is there, is there combined history going to be too much for them to be able to do it? Or is this, again, just early season weirdness? And it could just be your early season weirdness. Mm-hmm. But it's lasted long enough now that we're like, this feels like it's beyond early season weirdness a little bit. We're what, two and a half weeks? Just a little over two weeks. About three weeks in now. Yeah, because they've played seven and eight. They played 15 games. So they're probably, yeah, a little less than three weeks into the season. Yeah, and so it's starting, you know, we're, it's April 13th. We're moving through April. Easter's over. We're all like, all right, when do they start getting even a little bit better? Yeah. It's not even that people are expecting everything to be solved because we all know better than that. But we're looking for something small. We're looking for Bryson Stott to not hit the ball directly at a fielder or into the ground. We're looking for Brandon Marsh, who has been excellent so far, to just not, just that one little thing gets to him. We're just like, come on, man, you had it all going on. Yeah. Just keep rolling. You know, we're looking for one of these relievers to not suck so bad. Well, some of them are not bad at all. Some of them I've been happy to see. Yeah. Some of them are. Well, Jose Alvarado. Jose Alvarado has been really, he's really struggled with his command. Pretty much everyone in that bullpen has been really good. I mean, I wanna throw some, Brad Keller had a little bit of a rocky outing on Saturday, but gave up just the one run, managed to hold the lead. Juan Duran's been fantastic. They've been using him a lot, too. And they have been. They've been using him a lot. The big surprise in the bullpen is Tim Miza, who a lot of people now think, put him in the Jose Alvarado role for right now. Like, I mean, he and Tanner Banks should be your top two lefties out of the bullpen until Jose Alvarado can figure out his command issues, because it's just, he's not reliable in the eighth inning at the moment. And Tim Miza is just, what, I mean, that's the thing. Yeah. He's like one of those beautiful relief pitcher things. You know, like, Tim Miza? You know, is he gonna be an all-star? Tim Miza, he might be our only all-star this year. Right, last, that's right. Last guy added to the bullpen at the start of the, at the end of spring training. Those are the stories you love to hear. I'm all on board on Tim Miza, he's been fantastic. Very, very cool stuff. And so the bullpen, Boylan's been really good. You know, Kerkering has been pretty good since he came back. And I do wanna say, I was, I have had some concerns about Johan Duran at times. He's looked very, very good of late. Like, he looks like the tarantula again. So that was very encouraging to see. Before I get to the rotation, I do just wanna, Bryce Harper has obviously taken some heat among the fan base, especially for what he did, trying to stretch that single into a double on Sunday. And you know, we all agree with his remarks after the game, they're playing bad baseball. And I do hope that he was kind of directing that towards himself a little bit with that play. But overall, at the plate, Bryce Harper is swinging a really good bat. Dare I say, an elite stick of late. Since the start of the Colorado road trip, over the last nine games, Bryce Harper's hitting 400 with a 514 on base and a 767 slugging percentage. That's a 1280 OPS. He's got two homers, five RBIs and five doubles and seven RBIs over that time. And over the last six games, 526 batting average, 640 on base, 895 slugging. That's a 1535 OPS with a homer, four doubles and six RBIs. He has been swinging a really productive, good hot bat, staying through the ball, not pulling off, not trying to do too much when he's at the plate anyway. So that's been, that is a positive that we have seen from Bryce Harper here over the last week and a half. Completely. I've been so delighted to see him. I don't even know if he's changed his approach so much as become just slightly more selective. He doesn't look quite, at least at the plate, he's not looking quite as desperate to get a hit. When he gets a couple of hits, you can see him settle in, he's like, all right, this is what's supposed to happen to me. This is what I'm supposed to do and now I'm just doing it. But when he can't start, it's like, how do I get to the place where I'm supposed to do what I'm supposed to do? So it's nice to see him not searching in that way. But you could tell he's trying to pick up the slack for some of his teammates, because he got left out on first base a couple of times this weekend. And he, there's nothing like when they focus in on him as that music is playing into commercial and he's taking off his gloves and whatever and he's got a face on. He's like, he doesn't want to show the face to anybody else, but he's showing it to his gloves and the batting kid. He's like, I hate this, someone bring me home. And yeah, that's the only thing I'm seeing that he's frustrated about. But I mean, seeing Bryce Harper do well is a big load off of my mind, the big weight off my shoulders. Same here, but there's nothing he can do about that. And he has to just accept that and just keep doing what he's doing and just accept that. And guys will get you in eventually at some point. Don't try too hard. Right, don't try to do too much. You're a good baseball player. And by the way, he's doing all this with no protection in the lineup, which just kind of proves the point. He doesn't, getting someone behind him as protection so that he'll see more pitches to hit, it's not an actual thing. Like he's seeing actually fewer pitches in the strike zone right now than he usually does. And it doesn't matter. He's hitting really well because when he does get those pitches over the strike zone, he's hitting them. And they're throwing him more breaking stuff early in the count over the plate that he's doing damage on. So I mean, that scouting report will change at some point, but that's a good adjustment that Bryce Harper has been making here over the last week and a half or so. It is, it's great to see him make that adjustment because we go so long without seeing him do well. You're like, does he know how to make adjustments anymore? Right, right. And real quick, the starting rotation, it just, it's been uneven. This is the strength of the team, or supposedly. We've seen really all five of these guys have excellent outings, including Tyjuan Walker. And then we've all seen them get absolutely blown up. Jesus Lizardo could not have, he looked awful in his first start of the season, could not have been more dominant against Colorado, and then comes out and blows a four nothing lead after being staked to a four nothing first inning lead. He gives up six runs. He had a no hitter going through the first four innings and then didn't make it out of the fifth. I mean, some real Arnold type stuff there. It was really a weird start from Jesus Lizardo. And then Tyjuan Walker had the anti-Lizardo start, had a brutal first inning, just getting booed mercilessly by the fan base. I mean, he comes out, gives up a lead off bomb, then walks the first guy, he gets behind like three and oh on the next guy, and the fans are just, they just throw an 88 mile an hour slop up there. I mean, you're just like, what are we doing here? And I just like, and I don't blame the fans. Like I feel bad for Tyjuan because he doesn't have a choice but to go out there. But like the fans don't want to see that. Like that's the Phillies fault. Right, but then he comes back and pitches four shutout innings and just gives up the two runs through five and the Phillies win that game four to three. So again, weird pitching performance there. And then Andrew Painter, who was scratched from his start on Sunday because he had a migraine and was throwing up early in the afternoon, manages to feel well enough at a certain point to pitch the middle part of the game. So Zach Pop pitches the first two innings and then Andrew Painter comes in and is brilliant in innings three through seven. Five innings, three hits, one run allowed, one walk, seven strikeouts on 80 pitches. Might be the best pitching we've seen him do since spring training of 2023 before he got hurt. Yeah, I love that he went out there. I love that they let him go out there because I think this situation is weird. Like migraines are strange. I've had them, they are unpleasant. I've only had one to the point of throwing up once and it is something I do not wish to repeat. They are brutal. And so that he was able to feel well enough to go out and pitch and pitch that well and that the Phillies had enough confidence in him to let him go out and start his start a few innings later. Like that's a kind of like a remarkable flexibility that I would not expect from them. You know, if a guy is sick, my impression is he is young, he is sick, let's not mess with him, sit him down. But no, they felt confident enough in what he had to say. And I can't, that feels like a big step in his development to me. It feels like, all right, they trust him. You know, they trusted him to say he wasn't good enough to go, but they trusted him that he was good enough to go and he proved that they could trust him because he went out and did well. Like that's a big step in the growth of a pitcher between a pitcher and a manager, a pitcher and a pitching coach. I think those are big things for Payner to have displayed. And I think it'll only pay dividends down the road as they continue to give him, they trust him more with the starts he makes. He's like, no, I can get through this next batter, I can make it to the end of the inning. They're gonna listen to him and God willing, he'll be able to make good on those promises. Now, at least he'll have a chance to try it. Yeah, I think you're right. And I think it was impressive how good his stuff was given that he wasn't feeling very well. Definitely looked like he had made some mechanical adjustments too. He was more on top of the ball. Everything was more on a downward plane. So his fastball was more effective. His breaking ball had more vertical drop to it, a lot sharper against the Arizona hitters in that game. And that's what we had seen from him before he got hurt. And so very, very encouraging stuff from Andrew Painter there. But at JheyKid on Twitter had this interesting note about the Phillies pitching staff. Right now they have the third highest strikeout rate in baseball, 27%. The lowest walk rate in baseball at 6%. And a top 10 home runs per nine innings mark. And yet they're tied for 19th in ERA this year. That is the largest gap between ERA and fielding independent pitching. Right now the Phillies ERA as a team is 4.16. Their FIP is 2.74. That is a 1.42 gap. That's a big gap between their ERA and their fielding independent pitching. Which for those of you who don't know what FIP is, it strips out all batted ball data. Tries to strip away all the luck. It focuses on strikeouts, walks, and home runs. Mostly things a pitcher can control. There's some noise with that stat. And so it's not something that you use instead of ERA. But it kind of gives you a good picture of whether or not a pitching staff or a pitcher has been maybe more unlucky than not. So you could argue that the Phillies pitching staff probably has gotten a little bit unlucky here in the early going. And that's maybe why we've seen some of these blow up innings from some of these guys here. So yeah, I mean a little bit uneven, Liz. But I think overall I'm relatively pleased with the pitching staff. And really they're being asked to do it all because the offense has been MIA. I'm looking, I'm on baseball reference. I don't know if that's where you were looking at your FIIP numbers. But I'm looking and seeing some extremely interesting gaps between a player's ERA and their FIIP. Good Lord, Jesus Lozardo, 6.23 ERA, 2.34 FIIP. Fielding independent, I think he was the victim of some bad fielding. But like Andrew, oh no, not Andrew. Yeah, Andrew Painter's fielding FIIP is 1.54 right now. Wow, that's very good. It's very interesting to see. Because I don't know if the Phillies fielding has been that bad. So I kind of want to go back and watch some highlights and see how much the fielding really did impact. Because I'm not wary of stats like FIIP. But I feel like they're a little opaque sometimes in what they weight and what they don't. No, I agree with that. And I think you just kind of have to take it as one of a number of different stats that you're gonna look at. An array. At the very least, I think that just kind of does tell the picture a little bit of maybe a Phillies starting rotation or a Phillies pitching staff that's just been a little bit unlucky. I know in the National Series, that game where they gave up all those runs, so many of those were bleeders and runners in the middle. It was just a cacophony of batted ball unluckiness. All right, well, Liz, let's look ahead to the Cubs series. They'll play three night games here at Citizens Bank Park. Javier Assad, a right-hander, will go up against Christopher Sanchez. On Tuesday, you've got right-hander Colin Ray going up against Aaron Nola. And then on Wednesday, two lefties, Shota Imanaga has gone up against Jesus Lizardo in that series. So again, the Cubs and the Phillies are both kind of playing the same brand of baseball right now. The Cubs are seven and eight coming in to play the seven and eight Phillies. But a lot of teams in baseball. Right now, there's just so much parity going on around Major League Baseball right now, Liz. So I'm going to ask you, this week, is this the week the Phillies' offense maybe breaks out? What would be your definition of breaking out if you're the Phillies' offense now? What would that look like? Scoring in two innings in a game? I was going to say scoring at least two runs in two innings in a game. Wow. Right now, that is. Slow down. I know. Slow down. I'm so sorry. That was too high. I'm really sorry. Oh, Liz. My expectations are out of control. Terrible. I think that is an expectation for breaking out on Monday. If they could do that on Monday, that's breaking out. If it keeps going longer, then they'll have to do more to break out. That is my thought. If they can't hit more than at least two runs in two innings on Monday, on Tuesday, they have to do more than what that was because now they're even further down the line. Like, do something. I'm angry about games that haven't happened. Yeah. Let's save the anger for when they actually do fail to hit with runners in scoring position again. And yeah. And listen, I mean, I get just to finish up like we get it like and we're annoyed with this team and we're frustrated with this team. And I know if you don't believe in them, I get it. I really, really do. They haven't done anything to earn it. And the fan base has no patience. Like the Boo Birds have been out earlier and more in force this to start this season, really. And these Phillies, this collection has have had slow starts before. But man, there's just there's no patience. There's no grace period with this group right now, which is, again, why I won, whether I wonder whether or not changes would be made if the fan base would be so demanding of it that it could force somebody's hand in the front office. The Phillies don't usually act that way. But I don't know if the fan base is not happy. No, fans are very unhappy. And I'll say if you are not enjoying the Phillies right now, you have my permission, you have the the universe's permission to unplug from them until they're doing better, until they're in a position to make you happier. There's a point of all of this is watching baseball is to enjoy it and to love it and to find delight in it. And if you're not, you have full. It doesn't mean you're less of a fan. And anyone who tells you that you are is an idiot. We do this because it's our job. We do this because we need to. But if you want to turn the game off because they've given up three runs in the third inning, do it. You are not a bad fan. You have my permission. I will give you a laminated card if you want card carrying. Liz Rocher is a card carrying member of the Please Don't Hurt Yourself with baseball. Like, you know, it's a hurt yourself society of Philly's baseball because it can happen that way. So, yeah, so I think I think this is good. I do think you're a bad Phillies fan if you don't come back and listen to the podcast, though, and learn that that makes you a bad fan. I'm sorry to say, but, you know, you can you can redeem yourself by telling friends and family members about the hit and season podcast. You can do all that. All right. All right. Liz, any final thoughts before we wrap up? Something unrelated to baseball, friends, if you've got pills in your hand and you need to take them with something in the fridge, be sure to check if the milk is good before putting it in your mouth. Right before the podcast, I had some medications to take, put them in my mouth, but I'll just you know, I'll do what anybody does when they need to drink something for the fridge real quick. I'll open up the milk and have some. Nope, nope. That came out in chunks and then it was all in the sink. No, no, no, no, no. Please, please check your milk before you drink it. What a stupid thing to say. But honestly, it's the only thing I could think of right now. I'm so grossed out by what I did like an hour ago. So I am incapable of swallowing pills with anything other than water. Like I go and see. I have a tough time. And I can only swallow pills of a certain size, too. Like I can't. And I've had a very. Yeah. Pills are really tough for me, too. They always have been like I have it overly like since I was a kid. I have like a really sensitive gag reflex. So it's always been really unpleasant. And so this was just like, well, pills are not fun to take normally. But this is like a whole new kind of. Yeah. Awful. I didn't even imagine. That's not something that you want to have happen on a on a Monday morning. That's for sure. Stay smart, folks. Stay smart. Must be a morning. I'm Garfield. That's right. All right, everybody, that's going to do it for this edition of hitting season. And I want to encourage you, no matter what happens with the Phillies this week, check on back here for the midweek podcast. We'll let you know what's going on with the Cup Series and the end of the week podcast with Justin and Liz. And make sure to tell your friends and family members, even even if everybody's annoyed by the Phillies, you don't have to watch. You can come here and we'll tell you what happened. And we'll try to make it enjoyable and fun for you. Unlike the team itself. And maybe the Phillies get on a winning streak because I do believe there's a good team in there somewhere trying to get out like a little chicken trying to hatch from its egg. I agree. It's in there somewhere. So maybe maybe they will hatch this week against the Cubs. And you can join us here on the hit and season podcast, Apple podcast, Spotify, wherever it is, you get your podcast. You can also follow us on YouTube on the W.H.Y.Y. YouTube channel. Subscribe to us there. The roundtable episodes will be there as well. Thanks, everyone, for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time right here on hit and season.