PHILADELPHIA — Around the time Bryson Stott’s life changed, his entire season changed; it was not just because he lowered his hands and inched closer to home plate and started using a different bat. His son, Jaxson, was born around 4 a.m. ET on July 23. That night, Stott crushed a double and a home run to right field. He had exactly two extra-base hits to the pull side in the previous 66 days.
It was his 550th career game, counting the postseason. He turns 28 next week. He’s existed long enough in Major League Baseball for everyone to have an opinion. Scouting reports have been written and rewritten.
“This,” Stott said last week, “is maybe the first time that I’ve been on an upward trend towards the playoffs instead of the other way.”
There were small adjustments, the tweaks that make Stott the epitome of a Phillies lineup that is a little better. Maybe Trea Turner is the best example. Maybe it’s Kyle Schwarber. Or Brandon Marsh. This is, mostly, the same group that entered last October with huge expectations, only to flop in four games. It’s a lot of the same hitters who didn’t do enough in the 2023 National League Championship Series.
“You hear people say, ‘It’s the same lineup. It’s the same lineup,’” Turner said. “Our lineup was always good enough to win the World Series. It’s always been good enough. We just haven’t produced. You know what I mean?”
Everyone knows. But the doubt will persist until the Phillies prove otherwise in October. Inside the clubhouse, they look at a 96-win season as a calculated journey toward meaningful adjustments with the postseason in mind.
“A lot of times that happens when you struggle,” Turner said. “You have to struggle a little bit to figure it out. Stott struggling, Marsh struggling. Myself. I mean, all of us. You have to hit rock bottom and then figure it all out, you know? You have to get humbled. And I feel like that’s happened to a lot of people in this room — and it’s for the better, for a good reason.”
Since July 23, the night it all clicked for Stott, his .885 OPS ranks third among all second basemen in MLB. He collected 21 extra-base hits in his final 57 games, including a 441-foot homer he smashed against a lefty reliever. He had all of 17 extra-base hits in his first 90 games. He can point to tangible adjustments at the plate as evidence this isn’t a fluke.
But it was more than that. “I’ve always,” Stott said, “been kind of caught between … you obviously want to use the whole field and … .” No more avoiding. It was time for Stott to decide who he is.
“I just try to pull the ball now,” Stott said.
“This is maybe the first time that I’ve been on an upward trend towards the playoffs instead of the other way,” Bryson Stott said. (Emilee Chinn / Getty Images)
The Phillies scored six fewer runs in 2025 than in 2024. The team’s batting average this season was one point better, the on-base percentage three points better and the slugging percentage six points better. On the surface, it all looks the same.
They saw offensive improvements, sometimes incremental, in every month from June to September. Then, in September, the club’s .809 OPS was its third-highest in any full month since 2010. The only two better: August 2023 (.907 OPS) and September 2010 (.822 OPS). It means nothing and everything; a team playing well in September is not guaranteed to maintain that momentum into October.
But, take the larger arc of this 2025 season, and it’s not hard to see positive trends.
“They’ve done what they needed to do to make small, little adjustments to be ready for this moment,” Phillies hitting coach Kevin Long said. “Some guys did a better job than others. … By May and June, it seemed like everybody was conscious of what they were doing and what adjustments they needed to make so that we would be in this position. And here we are again, in a very good position. And, hopefully, guys can’t get caught up in moments. Let’s slow things down and trust ourselves. Do a lot of what we did in the regular season.”
It helped that, for the first time since 2022, the Phillies made a meaningful lineup addition at the trade deadline. Harrison Bader produced more than anyone expected; the Phillies might ask him to bat sixth in October. Marsh has never hit higher than seventh in a postseason game. He could be batting fifth; Marsh’s .836 OPS since May 1 ranks 14th among MLB outfielders.
Marsh swung and missed at a lower percentage of pitches in the strike zone during September than in any month of his career. His slugging percentage has risen every month since June.
He did not have a single hit in 29 April at-bats.
Brandon Marsh’s .836 OPS since May 1 ranks 14th among MLB outfielders. (Heather Barry / Getty Images)
In Long’s mind, the lineup is fundamentally different from this time a season ago. That’s even with a below-average season for Bryce Harper by his standards. Alec Bohm sputtered into last October, then was benched in the postseason. He finished this season with a nine-game hitting streak that included some of his best at-bats of the year. A sore shoulder had limited him.
The Phillies entered the 2024 postseason with Nick Castellanos batting cleanup and center fielder Johan Rojas batting ninth. Neither will be in the lineup Saturday for Game 1 of the National League Division Series. There are, for now, fewer holes.
“It just seems like there’s better flow and rhythm,” Long said. “It seems like it’s not broken up as much. I would say that that’s a big part of it.”
Clayton McCullough overlapped with Turner for almost two seasons in Los Angeles; McCullough was the first-base coach while Turner won his first batting title and soared toward a $300 million contract. Now they are NL East rivals. McCullough manages the Miami Marlins. Turner had 16 hits in nine games against them this season.
The intended plan was no secret.
“A lot of times, you try to get Trea to expand, especially on spin — right-handed spin,” McCullough said last month. “The times we faced him, when he doesn’t offer at those pitches, now he can hit anybody’s fastball. He’s very good with the mistake, arm-side breaking ball that stays closer to him. He had a homer at our place on one of those.”
Turner swung at a lower percentage of breaking balls and off-speed pitches out of the strike zone from righties in 2025 than he had since 2021. He won the NL batting title in both of those seasons.
His walk rate in 2025 was at his career average. He just made better decisions and hit in more favorable counts. He applied tiny adjustments along the way.
“I definitely feel like the chases aren’t as bad,” Turner said. “When I chase here and there, it’s kind of a one-time thing and then I fix it. Whereas my first year here, obviously, and then a little bit last year in the second half, it was like you couldn’t stop chasing.”
Trea Turner hit .304 this season to win his second batting title. (Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)
Earlier this season, Turner chatted with Long. “Man, I feel like I can’t get hot,” Turner said to his hitting coach. Long let him talk; Turner reached the proper conclusion on his own.
“It feels like I was just kind of …”
He flattened his hand and moved it across a straight line in front of his chest. Maybe it could have been better. But it was steady. He was consistent.
“And that’s a good thing,” Turner said. “There’s a positive to that.”
Some adjustments, like Schwarber’s overhauled approach against lefty pitchers, were bigger. Stott and Marsh might have made the proper changes behind schedule, but they closed holes.
There was no epiphany for Stott, who said he was tired of mishitting fly balls to left field. He has such good bat-to-ball skills that he could reach pitches on the outer edge. But he could not pull them. His hands were too high and, as Long said, Stott was “trying to chop the ball.” Stott moved closer.
“I literally can’t be closer to the plate now,” Stott said.
The adjustment was akin to playing a trick on his mind.
“Now I can pull those (outside) pitches,” Stott said. “I mean, obviously, it’s no secret. I like the ball in. People try to stay away from in. So I try to make more pitches (seem) in.
It always sounds easier than it is. The Phillies have tasted enough bitterness in previous Octobers to know that. The current feeling can evaporate so fast in the postseason.
As another October begins, the Phillies believe the scoring will be there. They made the adjustments to back it.
“Guys are growing up,” Harper said. “Guys are getting better. Guys are understanding who they are, becoming who they are, who they want to be. They’re confident.”
(Top photo of Trea Turner: Mitchell Leff / Getty Images)