Phillies News and Discussion 2025 Season

[phillychuck]

Just as point of interest, I looked up baserunning stats by team and the Phils are tied with the Padres for the most baserunning outs in the NL this season. It seemed like we make a lot of those outs. We have 35 so far, which is a large-ish number.

[kmc1019]

Fuel for the 2nd half and postseason that 3 deserving Phillies in Turner, Sanchez and Ranger were left off the team.

[andyb]

I always thought true stars (like Soto and Turner) should get the benefit of the doubt on close calls). Lots of players get hot for a half season but fans are there to see the true stars of the game.

[zambonir]

I suppose it's possible the fact that neither Phillies pitcher was likely to participate (Sanchez because of his schedule and Ranger because of his fragility) was a factor. But they could still both end up being named. Turner too.

Still, what a difference a year makes.

[VoteForKalas]

I guess I do not view Turner as a true star of the game. Suarez and Sanchez earned an all star berth, but Turner was pretty inconsistent until June and his defense leaves a lot to be desired.

He caught fire in June which is great, but he is being paid $27M per year and his current WAR of 3.2 at $8M per WAR is slightly under production for that salary. It is a lot better than it looked in April & May, but still not good enough.

He is certainly not in the class true stars like Soto, Ohtani, Judge, Harper et al. IMO.

[phillychuck]

He’s having a good defensive year; +9 outs according to advanced stats. He’ hitting like a maniac--you can’t ding him for starting slow and getting hot; you have to look at his overall production. No one is a .280 hitter every week and every month, all players fluctuate. He clearly deserves a spot.

[BostonRoss]

I'd like to see the true stars named as All-Stars, even if they are well past their primes or having poor years, I like that Kershaw is there; I'd like to see Trout and Betts as well. Turner is not in that class; Harper probably is, but we don't want him playing anyway.

There will be injury replacements named. I can think of one NL pitcher, Chris Sale.

[BostonRoss]

If he played second base, I'd agree, but Lindor and Elly are deserving.

[phillychuck]

If he played second base, I'd agree, but Lindor and Elly are deserving.

They are having good seasons, but neither is at Turner’s level statistically in WAR. Elly has more power but his defense is below average by quite a bit.

[zambonir]

Yup, you really dislike him! The advanced stats say his defense is good. The contract is obviously not great but he's turned out to be the best of the four SSs from that overpaid free agent class, and the hindsight of "should have just left Stott there" isn't looking so good either.

YMMV on whether he should be in the game just on star power and past performance. He probably deserves to be in the game more this year than last year though.

I imagine a Nats fan like Andy, or Dodgers fans view him as more of a star than we do, but he's certainly not a Betts or Soto.

Also he's one of our three-highest paid players and he's one of our three-best players. Not his fault Phillies can't develop All-Stars or make better trades. Case in point, we all know Nick isn't worth the $20 million given his bad offense, but what you get for $10 million is a Kepler.

It's very Philadelphia for us to be less outraged by one of our best players being snubbed than the rest of the country is, though it was already obvious he wasn't going to make it from the voting.

[andyb]

There is no definition of true star. Maybe perennial all-star or close to it for a decade qualifies. Turner has 39.5 career bWAR. He probably will fall short of the Hall of Fame (unless the next 5 years are like this year!), but players in the 50-60 WAR for their career are definitely pretty good.

Soto even more so than Turner. I know each team needs an automatic qualifier and that takes a few spots, but to me there is far too much parsing of small differences with players having their first hot season.

[zambonir]

The process is too byzantine to really quibble, or at least, to know who to actually quibble with. Both the managers and the league play favorites but also make tough calls. The players aren't necessarily any better at it than the fans, and the fans are also ignored sometimes, i.e. Betts and Soto were both leaders in the last tally, just not #1.

And I kind of miss the final vote gimmick.

[VoteForKalas]

I do not dislike Turner personally. I like and dislike aspects of his game. I thought DD overpaid him and that Turner has not lived up to the contract overall.

I like his combination of power and speed on the bases. The base stealing is still there, but his power has ebbed a bit this season. Not only is his SLG down from last season, but significantly down from his peak 2021 (.536) season. I also like that he is posting his best OBP since 2021 (.375). That helps mitigate his tendency to get himself out on the same crap pitches at the plate which hurts the offense.

I remain skeptical that his increased discipline saps his power; his SLG was pretty consistent during 2022-24 (.466, .459, .469) and he stands at .451 right now. If he keeps going, he'll end up in that same ballpark, but with better discipline i.e. a better all around hitter.

I see defensive inconsistency at a premium position. I have read on here for years about the inaccuracy of existing defensive metrics. Are these advanced stats new metrics that are more accurate?

Harper, Wheeler and Schwarber are our three best players IMO. Turner would be #4 on my list.

[EastFallowfield]

Saw a stat about Soto on the game the other day, his numbers with runners on base are really bad:

AVG: .158

OBP: .322

SLG: .301

OPS: .622

For reference purposes, here's the 2025 Phils stats with runners on base:

AVG .255

OBP .328

SLG .402

OPS .730

Kinda think both sets of numbers are fairly random, but for those fans who believe in clutchitudeness.

[zambonir]

Well yeah I wasn't including pitchers. I certainly wish he was a better/more powerful offensive player but not as much as I wish just one of our 3B, LF, RF or even 2B were better than he is [to say nothing of our catcher who used to be]. So he's a convenient lightning rod.

And even just average defense is good enough. The stats are not the be-all and end-all but you have to balance the ones that say how good he is against the eye test, and the fact that errors are not as big a deal as overall range for 150 games. Just as some fans love to point out all the great plays Bohm and Casty make but can't discern the ones they never had a chance to [me neither].

[phillychuck]

I saw somewhere (maybe in the game broadcast) how horrible the Phils’ numbers are with the bases loaded. If you took them out of the RISP stats, I’d bet the Phils would be near the top of the league in other situations!

[julio]

I thought DD overpaid him and that Turner has not lived up to the contract overall.

Part of what may be going on here is that contracts, for the top tier players in particular, have grown so rapidly that it's really hard to know what "living up to the contract" even means. A salary that seems outlandish (even in the context of other MLB salaries) when signed, gets eclipsed by other salaries before the ink has time to dry on the contracts. I think that, as fans, most of us react to the latest stratospheric contract in terms of where the market was last year, or two years ago (or longer ago, in some cases) - not in terms of where the market is going next year or farther out.

But when we get down to it, the only relevant question is, could the team have spent less on some other alternative, and gotten more return for that spending? If the player in question is Trea Turner... well, what should have DD done instead, for less money, that would have produced better results? I doubt if we can answer that with anything specific, and if we fall back to "there must have been something," we're just kidding ourselves.

[andyb]

Trea has been worth 9.6 WAR for the Phillies in about 2.6 years. Averaging about 3.7 a year. He has been worth that.

It has always been the back end of the contract that is questionable. Fans need to get over salary for a moment. The issue is whether a player is above major league average and Turner clearly is. We just don't have many of those every day players. And the scarcity of players that can consistently put up 3-4+ WAR seasons means they get overpriced in free agency.

The offensive problems are not Turner's fault. They are really the fault of everyone not named Turner and Schwarber. Bryce gets an injury pass and JT's numbers are understandable from an age and even contract standpoint. Everyone else (Bohm, Stott, Casty, CF) is underperforming to some degree.

[zambonir]

No contract is about WAR for dollar value, it's also about service time, the market at the time the contract was signed, and popularity. And the wasted years of these longer deals - but of almost any UFA deal longer than four years really - are built in as well.

Turner doesn't really have that star power and he's not homegrown so we want him to play at an MVP level for the money.

[julio]

And the scarcity of players that can consistently put up 3-4+ WAR seasons means they get overpriced in free agency.

I have to challenge this! If something (talent, buggy whips, whatever) is scarce, and it's being priced in an auction market...pretty much by definition, it's not "overpriced."

That's the economics of it. In a less purely micro-economic sense - factoring in any kind of social value/social good, etc., yes, Trea Turner's contract is overpriced. All major league contracts are overpriced. A mediocre, bit-part entertainer earns ten to one hundred times as much as a school teacher?

Or maybe they're not; maybe our society really does value passive entertainment (whether sports, movies, whatever) that much more highly than... well, pretty much anything else. How many people do you know who routinely pay $150/month for cable and/or streaming TV, but who would freak out if their property (school) taxes were increased by $1,800/year, to support higher teacher salaries? What do we really value?