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The Philadelphia Phillies are no longer a “good baseball team”


The Philadelphia Phillies are no longer a “good baseball team”

The Philadelphia Phillies have Monday off after completing a 10-game road trip over the weekend and being completely embarrassed by the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Whatever the players and coaches do in their free time, it must be aimed at finding a way to get the train back on track.

The Phillies are a disaster right now.

There is no other way to put it after they had a 4-6 record on the road and were down 12 runs in their last two games, including a ridiculous 23-6 deficit.

Since the All-Star break, Philadelphia is now 7-15 with just one series win.

Contrary to what the players in the clubhouse repeatedly claim when asked about their problems, they are currently “not a good team”.

Good teams don’t let themselves be embarrassed two games in a row by suffering a walk-off loss to a group that broke their hearts in the playoffs last year.

Good teams don’t have the ninth-worst batting average (.241), the 11th-worst OPS (.711), and the 12th-fewest runs scored (95) since the All-Star break.

And good teams certainly don’t allow the eighth-most earned runs (109), the seventh-most hits (206), and the seventh-highest batting average (.274) to their opponents.

“We’re not playing our best baseball right now. We just have to keep going, realize we still have a long season ahead of us, and we just have to keep playing our game,” Bryce Harper said after Sunday’s game, according to Patrick Brown of MLB.com.

Now the question arises, what exactly is their game?

Forget the statistics listed above about how this Phillies team has performed over the last few weeks. On the outside, they don’t even resemble the group of guys the city has brought in over the past two years.

There is no pride, no confidence, no joy.

They look like a team that peaked too early.

Maybe they know this, and all their frustration over their poor play has now turned into defeat. They have to accept that what worked so well for them when they dominated Major League Baseball no longer exists.

Or maybe those games gave Philadelphia an opportunity to rebuild after its low point and use the off day to get back on track and pick up some wins against the weaker Miami Marlins and Washington Nationals.

If the Phillies want to win the World Series like they promised in spring training, they’ll have to come up with something fast, because right now they’re not only not a good baseball team anymore, they’re playing like one of the worst in the MLB.

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