{"id":513174,"date":"2026-03-09T15:20:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T15:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/513174\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T15:20:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T15:20:08","slug":"are-the-phillies-a-good-defensive-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/513174\/","title":{"rendered":"Are The Phillies A Good Defensive Team?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part of a series of articles previewing the defensive performance of all 30 MLB teams by asking the question \u2026 are they good? We give an overview of team strengths, weaknesses, and other things to know, using Defensive Runs Saved and other stats as the basis for our evaluation. To see the full series, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

2025 Team Defensive Runs Saved Rank: 22nd<\/p>\n

Team Strengths<\/p>\n

The Phillies turned a weakness into a strength by signing Adolis Garc\u00eda to replace Nick Castellanos in right field. Despite limiting his errors, Castellanos rated as a poor defensive outfielder throughout his Phillies tenure (though he did make some great plays in postseason). He totaled -11 Runs Saved there last season, which ranked near the bottom.<\/p>\n

Garc\u00eda had a fantastic 2025, with a career-high 16 Runs Saved (for an in-depth recap of his season, click here<\/a>). In particular he excelled at catching the shallow-hit fly ball and at limiting baserunner advancement. His outfield arm numbers have been excellent year-after-year.<\/p>\n

After that, the next-best thing about the Phillies\u2019 defense is Bryson Stott\u2018s range. Over the last three seasons he has the fourth-most Runs Saved from range and throwing but he\u2019s given some of that back because he and the Phillies have been consistently bad at turning double plays.<\/p>\n

One other thing: The Phillies do have some very good fielding pitchers, at least by Defensive Runs Saved, specifically Cristopher S\u00e1nchez, Taijuan Walker, and Zack Wheeler, though they lost a good one in Ranger Su\u00e1rez.<\/p>\n

Team Weaknesses<\/p>\n

As previously mentioned, struggles turning double plays is a Phillies weakness and a big one, not just for Stott and Trea Turner, but Alec Bohm at third base too.<\/p>\n

Bohm is probably their biggest weakness and let\u2019s give him credit for getting a lot better the last few seasons. But he still hasn\u2019t had a season with positive Runs Saved at third base, which is why we list him here.<\/p>\n

J.T. Realmuto has tallied -6 Runs Saved at catcher the last three seasons. His rep is better than that but age seems to be catching up to him. Realmuto has a history of being a good pitch blocker but his pitch framing Runs Saved numbers have been -5 or worse in three straight seasons.<\/p>\n

Other Things To Know<\/p>\n

There are a couple of things that could seemingly go either way.<\/p>\n

1) Bryce Harper played a pretty good first base in 2024 and was talked up for the Gold Glove after tallying 5 Runs Saved. He dipped to -3 Runs Saved last season even though he cut back on his Misplays & Errors. By our measures he wasn\u2019t as good moving either left or right to make plays in 2025. What will he be in 2026?<\/p>\n

2) Justin Crawford is expected to be the team\u2019s starting center fielder. FanGraphs gives him a 40\/50 scouting grade for his fielding meaning he\u2019s currently below-average with a future potential of being average (50) and his minor league defensive stats bear that out. Center field is pretty important to hand to a rookie. Can Crawford handle the pressure?<\/p>\n

Are the Phillies A Good Defensive Team?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a range of scenarios for this Phillies team. In the best case, Garc\u00eda duplicates his 2025, the infield fixes its double play problem, Realmuto holds off the aging curve at catcher, and Crawford isn\u2019t bad. In that world, the Phillies are an above-average defensive team.<\/p>\n

In the case that none of that holds up, they\u2019ll probably rank 22nd in Runs Saved again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Part of a series of articles previewing the defensive performance of all 30 MLB teams by asking the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":513175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99],"class_list":["post-513174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/513175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}