The Philadelphia Phillies have had a rough go of it recently, and rough might be a bit of an understatement. Let's be honest, they've been in an absolute free fall since sweeping the Los Angeles Dodgers out of town before the All-Star break.
After starting July 6-3, which included that glorious three-game dismantling of the NL West leaders, the Phillies have looked like a shell of their former selves. They followed up the Dodgers set with a series loss to the Oakland Athletics, of all teams, including the 18-3 walloping in the first-half finale.
No problem, we all thought. They'd get a nice reset over the All-Star break and come back on the right foot. How wrong we were. They dropped two of three to the Pittsburgh Pirates and suffered the same fate at the hands of the Minnesota Twins.
That was just an ugly road trip, right?
Nope.
They came home and lost a series to the Cleveland Guardians and then got swept by the New York Yankees. If you're counting, that's five straight series losses. There have been some ugly, hard-to-watch losses, but there have also been plenty of winnable games that have slipped through the Phillies' collective fingers. It's hard to say which is worse.
At 10-14 in July and 3-9 since the All-Star break, they've lost their hold on the best record in MLB, but somehow still have a 6.5-game lead in the NL East.
3 Phillies to blame for ugly July slump
Don't get us wrong, we're not hitting the panic button. This team is too talented and has too many seasoned stars to play like this for the next two months — at least we hope. Manager Rob Thomson agrees, per MLB.com's Todd Zolecki.
“We’re a really talented club that is going through a tough time right now," Thomson said on Monday. "I truly believe we’re going to come out of it because we’re too talented.”
So who's to blame for this recent swoon? There's plenty of blame to go around, but narrowing it down to one or two individuals feels impossible. There have been poor performances all over the field, on both sides of the ball, on the mound, in the batter's box, in the field, out of the bullpen.