Rob Thomson is changing the lineup when the Phillies get back to Citizens Bank Park, a response to an offense that went 20 consecutive innings without scoring before the manager decided the batting order needed a shakeup. The Phillies were blanked 5-0 by the San Francisco Giants at Oracle Park on Wednesday afternoon, and the loss only deepened a trip that has left the club searching for any sort of rhythm.
Thomson did not dress up the problem. Asked about the team’s failed at-bats, he pointed to pull-side groundballs and said the club needed to “just change the mindset a little bit, you know?” He added that the Phillies had 10 pull-side ground-ball outs and said, “You have to use the field.”
The numbers behind the slump are harsher than the single loss. After opening the road trip with a seven-run first inning at Coors Field, the Phillies scored only 12 runs over their next 53 innings. They managed one extra-base hit in their final two games at Oracle Park and entered Wednesday with a.658 OPS through 12 games, tied for the club’s lowest mark in the first 12 games of a season over the last decade.
That is where Brandon Marsh and the rest of the order now find themselves: looking for a reset that has to come while the results are still bad enough to demand one. Bryce Harper reached on an infield single and later walked in the third inning against the Giants, but even that small success came with a shrug from Harper, who said, “Has it been that long?” after hearing about the team’s 20-inning scoreless stretch. When told more, he added, “Oh, wow, I didn’t know that,” then said on a personal level he felt great but acknowledged that does not help much if the lineup around him is not producing.
The Phillies have seen this sort of drought before. They were scoreless for 26 innings in June of last season, a stretch that now sits as the closest recent comparison to the current slide. J.T. Realmuto’s foot injury is also part of the picture; he said he will probably miss another game Friday with a badly bruised and swollen foot, leaving the club short one of its most important hitters while Thomson tries to rearrange the rest.
Realmuto put the problem in plain terms: “We’re just missing that spark where it takes one two-out knock to get us to score seven instead of zero.” He said the Phillies have a proven track record, but added that right now they are not playing to it and know they are “just one good swing away from the whole team taking off.” That is the hope in the clubhouse. The next test is whether the changes at home can turn a lineup that has spent too many innings waiting for one big hit into one that finally creates it.
