In their attempt to aggravate an entire fanbase to absolutely no end, the Phillies have tried every avenue of the game of baseball. The laser-like focus of fans’ ire has been on the offense and rightfully so. The number of ways that one can talk about how much the offense has struggled are legion – they aren’t hitting for much power outside of two players, they aren’t scoring in multiple innings, they have uncompetitive at bats, etc. Players hitting is the part of the game that scores runs and scoring runs helps win games, so naturally it is going to be the target for any team’s struggles. A more pessimistic point of view can focus on the pitching, which has also not been as good as hoped in this early going. Baseball Prospectus pointed that out in their look at teams that have risen and fallen the most in terms of playoff odds in the early going:
Philadelphia’s pitching has registered a 4.84 ERA so far. That’s the third-worst mark in the entire league. And if the bats have made for tedious viewing, the arms have made peoples’ brains implode and melt out their ears. The average wOBA on contact of knocks with an exit velocity of 80 mph or less is .225. Against this staff, it’s been .315. That’s 25 points higher than the team behind them. DRA tells a different story, with a league-leading 3.81 mark. The gap between what they’ve absorbed vs. what they’ve earned is second-worst.
Yet for both of those parts of the game that have dipped in the early going, perhaps nothing is more frustrating than watching a professional baseball team make errors in the field.
We’re so used to watching the Phillies struggle at the plate for long periods of time that we would expect them to perform well at their other job, yet they have not. Their 15 errors in the field is third most in the National League. Considering that they had the third fewest errors in the National League in 2025, this early season lack of performance is concerning.
It’s also that the errors they have committed have happened at some of the more inopportune times, perhaps none moreso than the error committed by Edmundo Sosa on Saturday against the Braves.
An inning that should have been completed by a routine play was allowed to continue, the Braves capitalizing on it by scoring three runs and sealing the victory.
If it feels like the fielding this year has been particularly bad, you’re not alone. Looking at some of the advance numbers, the Phillies are ranking near the bottom of the league in most anything you want to look at as a unit. As of Tuesday, they are:
Now, the general rule of thumb is that fielding stats, even the ones that we would consider to be advanced, are ones that take a long time to stabilize. There is still a lot of noise happening with these stats, making their trustworthiness and accuracy questionable. For example, it’s hard to believe that someone like Bryce Harper, who has been considered an above average fielder since he started playing first base, has suddenly fallen off a cliff and become the absolute worst fielder in the game right now by FRV. Yet there he sits (or sat, as of Tuesday evening).
However, with the Phillies as a whole, the numbers seem to match the eye test.
That doesn’t mean improvement isn’t forthcoming. We’ve known and heard stories about the work put in with Bobby Dickerson to improve some of the fielders the team has. That work needs to get put in and soon. The way the offense is underperforming, the pitching cannot be forced to make extra pitches constantly due to shoddy defense. They’re already starting to cycle through bullpen arms to keep pitchers fresh, so a better defense can help in a few, small ways to make that slow down.