SIGNS OF LIFE
OPINION: Once-flatlining Phillies are showing a heartbeat under Mattingly
Delaware County Daily Times: https://tinyurl.com/szyxe5mn
PHILADELPHIA — The baseball looked lighter Sunday afternoon at Citizens Bank Park. Or maybe the Phillies just stopped carrying the weight of April around with them.
A little less than two weeks after firing manager Rob Thomson during a 9-19 spiral, the Phillies wrapped up their fourth-straight series victory by blanking the Colorado Rockies 6-0 behind two more home runs from Kyle Schwarber and another dominant outing from left-hander Cristopher Sánchez.
More importantly, they left town for a six-game road trip looking like themselves again, like the team this city had been waiting to see all year.
The Phillies are 10-3 under interim manager Don Mattingly — a stretch that easily could have become the season’s breaking point, as they’re still nine games behind the red-hot Braves in the NL East. The standings still matter. The hole from April still exists. But the panic has eased because the Phillies suddenly resemble a team with a pulse, swagger and purpose.
Not coincidentally, they’ve started doing the little things that vanished during the losing streak.
They’ve gotten cleaner starting pitching. Better defense. Better at-bats. Better baserunning. Better energy.
“We’re playing with more urgency right now,” Mattingly said. “Guys are locked in from the first pitch, and when we do that, we’re a tough team to beat.”
The Phillies are hardly steamrolling elite competition in the last four series. The Rockies arrived in Philadelphia as one of baseball’s weakest teams. Miami and San Francisco have both struggled — though the Athletics sit atop the AL West.
But aside from the Braves and Cubs, bad teams spent much of April embarrassing the Phillies too. Winning the games they’re supposed to win counts for something, especially after the way the season began.
And unlike during the early swoon, the Phils suddenly look connected again.
“When everybody’s contributing, the lineup feels different,” Bryce Harper said. “That’s the offense we expect to be.”
Schwarber is back to carrying big innings and is tied with Aaron Judge for the MLB lead in home runs with 16. Alec Bohm responded to his “reset” days off with a two-homer breakout Saturday and then drove in a run Sunday. Harper returned in the Rockies series finale after a migraine scare and immediately homered. Brandon Marsh leads the majors with a .353 batting average.
“We knew we were better than how we played early on,” Schwarber said. “Now we’re starting to stack good games together instead of trying to win everything in one night.”
The clubhouse no longer feels like a room waiting for bad things to happen.
“The energy’s different right now,” Sánchez said. “Guys are playing loose again, and you can feel the confidence coming back.”
Mattingly said it’s what this group is supposed to look like. That may ultimately become the defining question of this Phillies season: Was April the truth or was it the outlier?
Because the roster still looks dangerous. The payroll still screams contender. And the core players who carried this franchise into October the last several years are still here.
The Phillies don’t suddenly look fixed. They remain under .500 (19-22) after digging themselves such an enormous hole. But a season that looked close to detonating now feels alive again.
As the Phillies head to Boston and Pittsburgh, that matters almost as much as the standings themselves.
Email Christiaan DeFranco at cdefranco@medianewsgroup.com. Follow him on X and Threads at @the_defranc.