The Philadelphia Phillies closed out their first half of 2025 with a 55-41 record and a half-game lead over the New York Mets in the NL East. That marginal lead was only kept after the Phillies mercilessly salvaged the series finale against the San Diego Padres in a tightly contested 2-1 victory, per MLB.com's Todd Zolecki, but not before some unique tweaks were made to the Phillies lineup.
Out of desperation to possibly get the offense going, Phillies manager Rob Thomson tweaked the lineup in a way Phillies fans are quite familiar with from previous seasons. He moved big slugger Kyle Schwarber back to the leadoff spot, as he had done so many times over the previous three seasons since Schwarber came to Philadelphia as a free agent. Unfortunately for Thomson and the Phillies, it proved quite ineffective.
Rob Thomson's desperate lineup change falls flat in Phillies' first-half finale
Sunday marked only the 10th game that Schwarber has batted leadoff in 2025. The change was primarily due to the club changing their philosophy on what the leadoff spot is to them. The Phillies ended up winning on Sunday before the All-Star break, but in spite of the lineup change. Trea Turner, who has batted leadoff 48 other times this year, instead batted second. The direct results couldn't have been much worse, as he and Schwarber combined to go 0-for-8 with five strikeouts.
Before, Schwarber was effective in his own way by batting leadoff, but it seems like the team made the right choice to finally move him down to bat with runners on base. In the limited time he has led off games this season, he's 7-for-40 (0.175 BA) with only a .788 OPS. When he has batted fourth in the lineup, he's hitting .277 with a .955 OPS.
It's unclear what the end goal was for Thomson to make the last-minute switch right before the break. It's not necessarily out of the ordinary for Thomson, but Phillies fans can just hope it was to give some kind of a spark for a recently struggling offense. Since the start of the Houston series on June 24, the Phillies' offense has averaged 3.8 runs per game. That average also includes two 13-0 blowout wins. According to FanGraphs, their 69 runs also scored during that span is the ninth-fewest in all of MLB.
The team may need some time off to regroup and recharge before games resume on Friday. Starter Zack Wheeler is taking that approach and prioritizing rest above all, per Zolecki. The second half will be all about where the Phillies will rank as they look to punch their ticket to the postseason for the fourth consecutive year.