Phillies News and Discussion 2025 Season

[zambonir]

Relievers

Romano struggled through the season’s first few weeks with the Phillies, allowing 14 earned runs in 9⅓ innings. Since then, he has allowed only four runs in 12⅔ innings, with 20 strikeouts and only six walks.

Hoffman’s season has been the polar opposite. He gave up two runs (with 23 strikeouts and two walks) through 16⅓ innings before allowing 15 runs in his last 10 innings.

Bryce Harper can’t return soon enough for the Phillies, who find that the NL is...

[schillingfan]

Hey, he was involved too! (Someone on hallowed Phils Listserv for real thinks MLB players should only conceive for out-of-season births, which is both a real hot baseball take and a highly dubious birds and bees take.)

It’s called the rhythm method, practiced by Catholics and smart women before birth control pillls.

[zambonir]

haha yes but it always doesn't work (in either direction). Many modern couples have trouble conceiving at all. Though not the Wheelers or the Harpers!

[EastFallowfield]

Always wonder if baseball players prefer their kids being born during the season cause then they spend at least half of the newborn's time out on the road and can get some sleep!

[zambonir]

Ha maybe but also if you want your baby to be born in the off-season you gotta get busy during spring training or the early part of the season. Any baby conceived between October and February is going be born in-season. Add in the fact that Philly isn't always where the kids might live or go to school, and who knows?

[zambonir]

Stott seemed to have gotten off to such a good start leading off initially. I guess the team's dominant stretch over the three bad teams papered over how much he'd trailed off

Phillies Mailbag: How much longer will Bryson Stott lead off for? | OnPattison

Stott's on-base percentage of .320 is sixth on the team. He has a 90 OPS+, which is well below the league average of 100.

Anthony SanFilippo: The one thing Stott has done well out of the leadoff spot is work long counts. And while that's a positive, it's not enough by itself.

In 34 games as a leadoff hitter this season, Stott is slashing .247/.297/.356 for an OPS of .654. That's not good enough. Your leadoff hitter should be getting on base at .350 at a minimum. Because Stott hasn't gotten on base enough, he's scored only 20 runs in those 34 games.

Conversely, Turner has scored 13 runs in the 16 games he's lead off. The difference? Turner has an on-base percentage of .363 when leading off.

[Callison]

I REALLY like Turner, Harper, Schwarber at 2,3,4. The Phils need a leadoff hitter and Stott has been handed the opportunity to become one. Show time for Stott. Though he hasn't shown much lately, the Phils should give him the first half before giving up on him.

Kepler has been equally disappointing. Acquired, IMHO, to hit HRs. Similarly, he gets the first half to prove he's not just another LF complete whiff by the Phils' talent scouts.

Sorry to see Lazar have a bad inning. Walking a guy on 4 pitches with a huge lead? Where did that poise go that he used to have? The Phils' pen remains a bunch of question marks - you can't guess what any of these guys are going to do when they're called.

Nice to see the Phils resume the season after getting beaten like rugs against the Brewers.

[BostonRoss]

I agree that Turner should lead off all the time, simply because he’s a better hitter than Stott, and he should get more plate appearances. And since pitchers change often during games these days, most games feature a combination of LHP and RHP. Lineup decisions based on platoon advantages often flip during the game.

But this Anthony guy overstates his case. Besides making arbitrary throwaway statements like a leadoff hitter “should” have a .350 OBP (implying that if Turner is unavailable, Harper or Schwarber must lead off), he ignores that the OBP difference between Turner and Stott against LHP is just.021. Last year it was.008.

[andyb]

SSS arguments about Stott as a leadoff hitter. Now I could see that he faces tougher pitchers on average leading off (relievers brought in to face Harper and Schwarber), but really that should not make much difference. Take out his rookie year and he is a .322 OBP guy. Expecting more than 330 out of him in the role is probably unreasonable.

We have 3 good hitters in the lineup and a bunch of complementary ones. Stott's speed and long counts are a plus in the leadoff role, but there is an argument to just get the top 3 hitters more opportunities. Of course then we don't have a good cleanup hitter. C'est la vie.

[Austinfan]

Both Bohm and Stott are disappointments, they've reached the point in their careers when they "are what they are," and it's not that impressive.
Stott at least can field, but to carry his bat you need a good offensive 3B.

[zambonir]

Yeah agreed the .350 OBP expectation is ridiculous. But, even as a SSS .297 as the lead-off man is less than ideal.

But, separately from the lead-off debate, Stott has not really progressed (or bounced back to his 2023 level) offensively as this season carries on. Which still makes him a perfectly good everyday player and above-average 2B but possibly headed down the same path as his equally respectable predecessor (Cesar H) - and also not necessarily a good enough hitter or defensive SS to be moved there like some people clamor for (even as our current SS is hitting .305 - I guess that's a win for the SABR era at least!).

[BostonRoss]

Stott has the fourth highest WAR among offensive players on the Phillies. He definitely belongs in the lineup against RHP. But lower in the order.

[zambonir]

Oh for sure but he was a 4.3 WAR player with slightly above-average offense (103 OPS+ that year) and 640 PAs in 2023; he might only be a 2.0 WAR player if he repeats last year's offense and plays even less against LHP (last year he was 2.5 in 570 PAs). And he did not have much DWAR value as a SS his first year.

Also his DWAR this year is negative so who the heck knows.

Until this stretch against the Brewers I would have said everything was working fine, and it certainly did last night.

[phillychuck]

Stott having a negative DWAR is ridiculous. Even a cursory sampling of his plays refutes that take entirely. Must be something wrong with the algorithm.

[BostonRoss]

dWAR is very dependent on context and interpretation. Maybe Stott hasn’t had many difficult opportunities. He’s been consistently positive defensively and will undoubtedly end up with positive dWAR by the end of the season.

[zambonir]

He's also -3 DRS this year. +1 in their "PART" (Positioning, Balls hit in air, Range, and Throwing) metric.

There's no question defensive analytics, especially public ones, seem haphazard. But I'm not sure the eye test is any corrective to that when the eye test is also part of any stat (by people who actually log every play by every player).

And even if he's 50% better than those stats suggest he would not be anywhere near the top 1/3 of MLB 2Bs.

Sosa is 0 DRS, -0.1 WAR. I'm using BBRef on those, FWIW, Fangraphs might be better (both in the positive sense and the accuracy sense).

[andyb]

Extra left-handed starter this year (Luzardo) so maybe Stott is just seeing fewer opportunities and that is making the SSS worse.

Or he is almost 28 years old so he is just getting beyond that magic age 27 which is when defense for normal players starts to decline. I think he is generally pretty good defensively, but maybe was never as good as the stats said a couple of years ago.

[BostonRoss]

I give greater weight to Stott’s 400+ games prior to this year than his 50+ games this season in assessing his defensive value.

[zambonir]

For sure nobody's saying he's a bad player. But if 90 OPS+ is who he is at the plate and his defense is merely good and possibly declining, suddenly he does not look like a guy who gets an extension or even that final arbitration year. Nor an untouchable player should you happen to need to move your SS to 2B. Nor a guy you move back to SS.

I'm not down on this 2025 team at all, but the future is quite muddy given the current combination of pending FAs, aging regulars, ceilings of "pretty good player" on the younger guys and 2026 possibly being too soon to seriously expect big contributions from Crawford and Miller (even if some feel otherwise here).

[BostonRoss]

Way too early to say he’s declining