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Get geared-up for the game

THE JAWN STORE

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He has five weeks to make it right.

The last seven starts made by the four pitchers the Phillies expect to use in the postseason (Zack Wheeler, Aaron Nola, Ranger Suárez and Cristopher Sánchez) yielded a 2.05 ERA. In 44 innings, those starters struck out 41 batters and walked only six.

It felt like the start of something.

Then, there’s Taijuan Walker. The Phillies have a decision to make, and it’s telling they did not commit to anything after Walker surrendered six runs in three innings Friday against Kansas City. Walker, as of now, is slated to start Thursday in the series opener against Atlanta.

That’s a tough sell.

So, is this the end for Walker? He is in the second year of a four-year, $72 million deal. The Phillies had adjusted their expectations and decided that if Walker could at least eat innings and be a little worse than league average, so be it. He has failed to complete five innings in any of his three starts since returning from the injured list two weeks ago.

If he cannot eat innings, he is a sunk cost. And, while a lot of this is about the six (or so) turns that his spot in the rotation will have until the regular season ends, cutting ties with Walker is a long-term decision. Have the Phillies reached such a sour point that they cannot envision him coming to camp next year as a No. 5 starter? If removing him from the roster is something they will consider in the offseason, why not do it now? Are there internal indications the Phillies can unlock something more?

The immediate decision is complicated by the Phillies not having a clear-cut sixth starter. They could try Tyler Phillips again in September. They could cross their fingers with Kolby Allard again. (Of note: Allard had 11 swings-and-misses in Sunday’s start, which is more than Walker has generated in an outing this season.) Could they go with a nine-man bullpen for the foreseeable future and do a bullpen game every fifth day?

Maybe it comes down to this: Is the objective to win as many games as possible or protect the other rotation pieces? Keeping Walker around should accomplish the latter goal, although even that is up for debate now.

The Phillies could use an opener ahead of Walker this week. They could move him to the bullpen, although that has never sounded realistic. Maybe he has one more start to prove something. Or maybe the Phillies decide they have seen enough.

In May, Orion Kerkering threw 31 fastballs at 98 mph or harder. He did the same thing in June. Then, in July, his velocity dipped. He was running too many deep counts. His command wavered. He was becoming more hittable. And, until last week, he had not thrown a single fastball at 98 mph in August.

He hit 98 mph in one of his appearances at Atlanta. Then, over the weekend in Kansas City, he hit 99 mph twice. The Phillies had sought some extra rest for Kerkering of late. It might have helped.

“Just the lull of the season,” Kerkering said last week. “Kind of getting used to that. Getting used to first-year rookie kind of stuff. Trying not to overthink it.”

The 23-year-old reliever is still a rookie, which is easy to forget because it’s felt longer since he debuted. Kerkering pitched a lot in the minors last season. But, even as a reliever, it was on a schedule. He knew before he arrived at the ballpark what days he’d pitch. The mental and physical grind of a big-league season as a reliever is impossible to simulate. Kerkering has had to adjust his routine between appearances.

Maybe he’s found something.

The easiest explanation when the Phillies aren’t hitting is they are chasing too much. That narrative will follow them after what happened in last October’s National League Championship Series. But not all slumps are created equal; the Phillies saw a higher percentage of fastballs from Arizona pitchers in Games 3-7 of that series (58.7 percent) than they did in Games 1 and 2 (55 percent).

This hasn’t been the same formula. Opponents have taken it to an extreme in the past six weeks.

The Phillies have expanded the zone too much at times. But, more than anything, they have missed their pitches to hit. And the team’s chase rate is not always indicative of how they are performing at the plate. It’s an aggressive lineup that will chase. Some hitters thought the focus early in the season on not chasing came at an expense.

MONTH	CHASE %	BA	SLG	R/G
Mar/April	28.6	.256	.420	4.74
May	28.3	.259	.413	5.78
June	30.8	.263	.429	4.5
July	29.1	.241	.417	4.46
August	30.6	.276	.435	5.05

It’s easier to remember the ugly swings on pitches out of the zone than the ones that fouled off hittable pitches.

The way to change a scouting report is to beat it, so a weekend in Kansas City might be the first step toward that for these Phillies. No team has seen fewer fastballs since the All-Star break. The Royals pitchers took it even further by throwing the Phillies 54.8 percent off-speed pitches in three games. It was the highest rate of non-fastballs an opponent used against the Phillies in a series this season.

And, in three days, the Phillies collected 22 hits on off-speed pitches.

In all, they had 45 hits, a restorative three days for an offense that has developed an identity as one of the streakiest in baseball. The Phillies are 11-11 in August with a .761 OPS that ranks 11th in Major League Baseball.

It just hasn’t felt like that.

There are ebbs and flows to a season, and then there are the 2024 Phillies. They have played about as poorly as they could for six weeks. They enter this week with the second-best record in the National League.

The proof is in sustaining it. This week, the Houston Astros come to Citizens Bank Park for the first time since the 2022 World Series. Then, it’s a four-game series against the Atlanta Braves.

They’ll probably see a lot more breaking balls.

Bryce Harper does not often have much to say about his swing or his performance — good or bad. He’s upset when he misses his pitch to hit. He showed that emotion in Sunday’s game. At his best, he is a dynamic power hitter with some of the best plate discipline in the sport.

But he has walked only eight times since the All-Star break, a span of 145 plate appearances. He has a .262 on-base percentage in that time. It’s arguably his worst stretch while with the Phillies.

He is still hitting the ball hard. He is not chasing much more; Harper has a 31.5 percent chase rate since the break, according to MLB’s Statcast data. He chased pitches out of the zone 30.6 percent of the time in his first 5 1/2 seasons with the Phillies.

But, with two strikes, he’s been susceptible to off-speed pitches out of the zone. Here is a plot of all of Harper’s strikeouts from mid-July on:

Harper doubled in each of the three games against the Royals. The double in Sunday’s win came on a fastball. But it is rare to see Harper take swings that look like this: