Phillies have 3 major weaknesses, and Braves exploited all of them

PHILADELPHIA − Every Phillies weakness was all right there for all 41,883 fans at Citizens Bank Park to see.

Cristopher Sanchez had pitched his guts out, making it through six innings and only giving up the three runs in the second inning. It wasn’t Sanchez’s best outing by a long shot. He gave up five hits. He walked three batters. He only retired the side in order once.

But Sanchez had thrown 108 pitches to get through those six innings. He was done. The Phillies trailed by a run. They needed a two-inning bridge to Jhoan Duran, and a few runs in order to give their closer a lead to protect.

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As we have seen often, the hitters couldn’t come through, and neither could the bullpen. Mauricio Dubon hit a two-run homer off Orion Kerkering in the eighth inning, sending the Phillies to a 5-2 loss on Sept. 4.

The loss was damaging in so many ways. For one, the Phillies (79-63) fell five games behind the Braves in the National League East. The two teams have three more games against each other over the holiday weekend, then three more in Atlanta next weekend.

Secondly, the Phillies were about to fall back behind the Cubs into the second wild-card spot in the National League. That means if the season ended today, the Phillies would face Chicago in the wild card round, with the entire best-of-three series taking place at Wrigley Field.

More importantly, the Braves exposed every Phillies weakness.

In addition to the so-called bridge to Duran, the Phillies don’t win when Bryce Harper doesn’t hit. He came into the game with a 35-game on-base streak, with a .500 on-base percentage during that time. Harper was hitting homers, doubles and walking. He reached 100 walks on Sept. 2.

Harper went 0-for-4. He popped to third to end the fifth with runners on second and third.

Harper has played in all 141 games this season. In the 79 wins, Harper is hitting .330 with an OPS of 1.070. In the 62 losses, he’s hitting .196 with a .677 OPS.

Harper, of course, is not the weakness. He is the catalyst.

And there’s not much help around him when Kyle Schwarber and Trea Turner, the first two batters in the lineup, aren’t hitting. Consider that Harper’s OPS in losses is still better than Turner’s OPS for the entire season at .668. In August, Turner hit .215 with a .572 OPS.

Schwarber, who still leads the majors with 40 homers, has just 7 since July 19. He’s hitting .201 since then with a .718 OPS. He also has 199 strikeouts on the season.

So you can see where this is going.

In second inning, just after Braves scored three runs, Luis Arraez singled and Alec Bohm doubled him in. Edmundo Sosa was then hit by a pitch, putting runners on first and second with no one out. But Bryan De La Cruz grounded into a double play and J.T. Realmuto struck out.

Bohm homered in the fourth to make it 3-2. The Phillies couldn’t get any closer. Harper’s popout in the fifth ended that rally. Then Arraez led off the sixth with a double. Bohm grounded out to third, keeping Arraez at second. Then Sosa and De La Cruz struck out.

The Phillies didn’t threaten again. Meanwhile, the Braves added two runs in the eighth off Kerkering and that was that.

Contact Martin Frank at mfrank@delawareonline.com. Follow on X @Mfranknfl. Sign up for the “Eye On The Eagles” newsletter, emailed to your inbox every Friday morning. Read his coverage of the Eagles‘ championship season in “Flying High,” a hardcover coffee-table book from Delaware Online/The News Journal. Details at Fly.ChampsBook.com

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Phillies have 3 major weaknesses, and Braves exploited all of them

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