LOS ANGELES — They packed for a long flight home after a winning road trip in California, and it did not feel like it should. It wasn’t just because the Phillies lost Sunday’s lopsided series finale to the mighty Los Angeles Dodgers 9-1. But, as May turns to June, everyone can sense how unsettling it is when the Phillies do not score runs like they have in previous seasons.
Somewhere, as clubhouse attendants stacked duffel bags on carts, a Trea Turner helmet was in two pieces. When he lined out in the seventh inning, he shed his equipment piece by piece and littered the pristine Dodger Stadium grass. He tossed his bat. He slammed the helmet, snapping the C-flap. He discarded his wrist guard. Then, someone from the dugout grabbed his attention. He’d have the final two innings of the blowout off.
The shortstop embodies most of what ails the Phillies. He has a track record. He has certain expectations. He has talent. He has hit the ball hard in streaks. He showed some life, as recently as earlier in the week against the San Diego Padres when he homered in consecutive games. Many of his underlying metrics are within career norms. But he’s prone to chasing.
“You feel like you’re doing things right,” Turner said, “and it’s still not going your way.”
There are different ways to view this Phillies team. They are 30-29, and they have the third-lowest OPS in the sport. They had a nightmarish April, which prompted their manager’s firing. They went 18-10 in May and have a winning record for the season, somehow, without a coherent offense for any prolonged stretch in 2026.
“We won the month,” Bryce Harper said. “I don’t think a lot of people thought we were going to do that. Got to win June, got to win all the way past that, and keep going.”
The Phillies went 18-10 in May to go above .500, but they have the third-worst OPS (.673) in the majors. (Meg Oliphant / Getty Images)
Harper wasn’t absolving anyone. He went 2-for-17 with six walks during the road trip. The Phillies, as a team, hit .169 with a .573 OPS in those six games. They scored 17 runs.
The Phillies have the worst on-base percentage in MLB. It is .292, a 36-point drop from a season ago. It’s the fifth-lowest mark for a Phillies team through 59 games over the last 128 seasons. The only teams worse were in 2015, 1942, 2016 and 1908 — not the sort of company anyone wants to keep. The Phillies averaged 65 wins in those seasons.
Only the New York Mets have experienced a larger year-to-year drop in slugging percentage from 2025 to 2026. These Phillies are near the bottom of the league in many offensive categories.
“Obviously shocked by that, right?” Harper said. “When you go into a season with a team we have, you don’t think you’re going to have that. Just have to keep plugging along.”
Everyone, by now, is tired of hearing this. Even Turner, someone who hates clichéd speak, needed it as he attempted to answer reporters’ questions. “I don’t know,” he said. “Just keeping it a little simpler, not trying to do too much … all those cliché things.”
None of them believes they are this poor as an offense because that would defy so many assumptions. But the game doesn’t wait for anyone.
Maybe they can look at it like this: The Phillies have fielded a dismal offense for 59 games, and they still have a winning record. They did not hit for a week in California, and they still had a winning record.
“I think you feel good after it’s all the way over,” interim manager Don Mattingly said. “Obviously, we’d like to win the series here with these guys. But I think the runs have been a little bit of a theme, right? We’ve pitched really well. We haven’t really gotten on track offensively. We’ll keep working on that. And that’s going to break out. We feel like that’s going to break out at some point. Just saying it and hoping for it … we have to keep looking into what’s going on with each guy and keep getting better.”
That’s the challenge: There are no realistic solutions for the Phillies other than their current group simply being a little bit better. Kyle Schwarber has a .940 OPS. Harper’s is .868 and Brandon Marsh’s is .821. Then, there is a 177-point gap between the third- and fourth-best figures on the team with Bryson Stott’s .644 OPS.
Stott went hitless for the entire week until Sunday’s ninth inning, when he mashed a solo homer to deep center that prevented the Phillies from a shutout. He had hit nine balls at 95 mph or harder during the six games with nothing to show for it. He joked after Sunday’s game that he would have just kept running the bases if that ball he scolded in the ninth inning was somehow caught. Gallows humor never hurt.
“You can look at all sorts of numbers and stats,” Turner said. “And I think that’s what’s frustrating; I feel like some guys are taking good swings, hitting the ball hard, and just not finding holes. At the end of the day, it comes down to whether or not you scored the runs, and we haven’t done that. So I think there’s positive things to look at in there. But how do you get production out of that? And I think it’s a hard question. That’s a lot of why I’m frustrated.”
The Phillies entered Sunday tied for third in the majors in hard-hit rate. They were sixth in average exit velocity, only 0.2 mph behind both the Dodgers and Atlanta Braves. Hitting the ball hard is not everything, especially if it’s on the ground too often, but it’s the basis for most modern success in this sport.
Just raising the floor in certain spots on the field would have a real effect. There are too many holes right now. Adolis García, who began the trip on the bench for a day, went hitless in California. García has three hits in his last 57 at-bats with 30 strikeouts. He swung at a pitch in Saturday night’s game that would have skipped behind a left-handed batter.
The Phillies like García for his defense, and he plays a terrific right field. That is a welcome change. But it’s becoming harder to justify playing him every day. His .571 OPS ranks 157th among 160 qualified batters.
It’s June. The time for feeling out is dwindling, and teams begin to make real evaluations. Everyone in baseball knows veteran executive Dave Dombrowski will be hunting for an upgrade — whether it be a right-handed or left-handed bat. The Phillies just need better hitters, period, no matter what side it is.
Until then, it’s going to look and feel like it shouldn’t. Turner’s broken helmet represented everyone’s irritation about it.
“Probably the lineup as a whole is frustrated,” Mattingly said. “Obviously, guys get frustrated when they square something up. And you know, Trea swung it back good in San Diego. He probably came out of that feeling good, and then probably a little frustrated here.”