Estévez could feel it, even if he entered at an odd time. The Phillies are happy to have him. How do they recapture that energy that powered them for the first few months?
“Honestly, it’s just continue to play baseball,” Castellanos said. “What I’ve noticed is you can’t be lackadaisical and just wait for it to show up. And you definitely can’t press and try to do more because that’s also a recipe for disaster. I think that honestly, it’s just, waking up and attacking each and every day. Like, ‘All right, this is the game that we have today.’ Prepare the best you can and focus on competing as best you can.”
Winning more games would help. Better contributions from the club’s star players would help.
That was Bryce Harper’s rallying cry over the weekend. The stars have to show. It’s what this whole thing is built upon. No trade can change that. Harper is hitting .143 with a .544 OPS since the All-Star break. Trea Turner, who struck out on three pitches to end the game, is hitting .167 with a .549 OPS since the All-Star break. He grounded into one double play Monday night and should have hit into another if not for a bobble at second base. J.T. Realmuto is hitting .143 with a .345 OPS since being activated from the injured list on July 20.
The stars made noise Monday night. They happened to play for the Yankees. There were “M-V-P!” chants for Aaron Judge at one point later in the game.
It was a sight reminiscent of the dark years at Citizens Bank Park.
“This was the first night that I’ve seen an opposing fan base take over the stadium,” said Castellanos, who came here in 2022. “Part of which, you know, they were up by eight runs or whatever it was. Hats off, they showed up and they were cheering for their group.”
“When we play better,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said, “we’ll hear our fans.”
If anything, the Phillies have squandered a chance to bury the Braves and Mets in the NL East race. The Phillies, a .500 team for more than six weeks, still maintain the largest division lead in MLB. They are 8 1/2 games ahead of Atlanta and nine up on the Mets.
“We put ourselves in a good position,” Wheeler said. “We’re up pretty good right now. We just have to figure it out and start playing a little better all around. We’re a really good team. And you can’t be good every time out. You’ll go through these stretches throughout the season. We don’t like it. The fans don’t like it. But it’s part of the game.”
Wheeler, a star pitcher, is not exempt from the current malaise. But at least he was on the mound for one of the team’s three wins in the past 12 games. Rookie Tyler Phillips started the two other wins. Everything has felt harder.
And, to Castellanos, weirder.
“So, since London, we’re .500?” he said. “I didn’t think that. I thought that we’d still have a winning record over the past 40, but … that’s interesting.”
They have two more against the Yankees before a 10-game trip to the West Coast. It’s a hefty challenge. Good teams have bad stretches. Great ones prevent it from lingering longer than it should.
Carlos Estévez stood in the middle of his new clubhouse Monday afternoon and, from his view, everything was possible. He had heard about this place from people around the sport. The Phillies’ newest reliever flew across the country, gained 19 1/2 games in the standings and entered a ballpark that has gained a reputation as a baseball haven.
“However I can put a grain of sand onto this beautiful beach that these guys built here,” Estévez said, “I’m down to do whatever, man.”
Right now, it’s not fun for the team with the best record in MLB. The Phillies are playing their worst baseball of the season and it was laid bare in a 14-4 loss to the Yankees. New York smashed three homers in the first two innings against Zack Wheeler. They hung seven runs on one of the better pitchers in the National League. They made it look effortless. “Let’s go, Yankees!” chants filled Citizens Bank Park in the eighth inning. Backup catcher Garrett Stubbs pitched for the second time in the past 11 games. He lowered his ERA to 31.50.
So, the Phillies have course-corrected. They are on pace for 99 wins. They have lost nine of their past 13 games. They are 8-12 in their past 20. They are 21-22 in their past 43 — ever since they flew across the Atlantic Ocean to play in London.
“Well,” Nick Castellanos said, “every team goes through ups and downs in the course of the season.”
But Castellanos has been thinking about it for a few weeks. The Phillies swept the second-best team in the league, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and that’s right when their skid commenced.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I feel like the energy in the clubhouse has been different ever since the Dodgers series. And, I don’t know the rhyme or reason, but it has felt different. And I remember just sitting here and listening to a few guys say after that first loss against the A’s, like, ‘That was a weird game.’ It just felt weird. And I felt what they were talking about. It still kind of feels like that.”
The Phillies might be done rearranging the edges of the roster; they have continued to make calls on bullpen reinforcements, according to major-league sources. They could add a multi-inning middle reliever. But, as the Phillies debated big and small changes to a successful team, they had to balance conflicting objectives. They wanted to improve. They did not want to do it at the expense of the atmosphere that was created inside the clubhouse.
Phillies left handed reliever Gregory Soto has had an up and down year to say the least. Eric Hartline / USA Today
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