The Phillies’ tendency to chase bad pitches led to their NLCS collapse. Do they need to change the mix?

Within days of the Game 7 crash-landing, Phillies executives, coaches, and analysts met to survey the wreckage and sift through the reasons such a promising postseason run veered so far off course.

Spoiler alert: It wasn’t one thing.

But apart from Craig Kimbrel’s twin meltdowns in Arizona and the managerial second-guesses that accompany any lost playoff series, one theme seemed to connect the four defeats in five games against the underdog Diamondbacks in the National League Championship Series.

“We swung at way too many pitches out of the strike zone,” president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said. “Way too many.”

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To be fair, the Diamondbacks deserve credit, too. As Arizona pitching coach Brent Strom admitted before Game 3, they changed their strategy — or at least executed it better — by throwing up and in to the Phillies’ right-handed hitters to move them off the plate, then expanding the zone low and away.

The result: The Phillies went 31-for-157 (.197) and chased 36% of pitches out of the strike zone in the last five games of the series. Nick Castellanos went hitless in his last 23 at-bats, Trea Turner in his last 14.

And Red October turned blue.

“Going back and looking at a lot of pitches that they threw me, there was a lot of stuff on the edges — up, down, in, up, away,” Castellanos said. “Could I have been better? Absolutely. Could we have been better as a team? Absolutely. But we got beat, and it’s a humbling feeling.”

It also exposed one of the few flaws in a high-powered offense that tied for the major league lead in homers (107) and ranked second in runs per game (5.75) over the final two months of the season, then scored 46 runs and smashed 19 homers through the first eight postseason games.

And it prompted an existential question at least within some corners of 1 Citizens Bank Way: Must the Phillies alter the makeup of their offense to avoid being exploited again? Or would that be an overreaction to a five-game slump, albeit at the worst possible time?

It appears the Phillies are leaning toward the latter.

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Never mind that they chased 31.4% of pitches out of the zone in the regular season, the majors’ fourth-highest rate. (League average is 28.6%.) Or that, among 212 hitters with 400 plate appearances, Castellanos had the sixth-highest chase rate (41%). Turner ranked 29th (35.3%), Bryce Harper tied for 45th (33.4%), and J.T. Realmuto tied for 73rd (30.6%).

Outwardly, at least, Dombrowski has indicated he’s unconcerned that the Phillies might have too many of the same type of hitter.

“Not really,” he said. “What you want to do is score runs, right? That’s what your goal is, however you end up doing it. I don’t think it necessitates [saying], ‘Well, we need to trade this guy who’s not as disciplined and maybe hits home runs for a guy that’s much more disciplined and an on-base guy.’ I’ll take the run production, in that case.”

Contrast that with the shifting philosophy in Seattle. The Mariners endured the disappointment of missing the playoffs by one game — to the eventual World Series-champion Rangers, no less — and concluded they swung and missed too much. So, they didn’t make a one-year qualifying offer to free-agent Teoscar Hernández (26 homers; 31.1% strikeout rate), with president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto telling reporters this week that he’s looking more for contact hitters.

Dombrowski maintains that the Phillies’ top priority is re-signing free agent Aaron Nola. They lack an internal replacement, so if Nola goes elsewhere in a pitching market that is overflowing with buyers, they must turn to Plan B, C, or D. (Think Sonny Gray, Eduardo Rodriguez, or perhaps a trade, in some order.)

“We’re happy with our club from a positional player perspective,” Dombrowski told reporters this past week at the general managers’ meetings in Scottsdale, Ariz. “I’m not saying that we can’t try to get better or that you’re not open to different ideas. But we’re really pretty well set from a positional perspective.”

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So much so that Dombrowski called Rhys Hoskins last Sunday to let him know that Harper’s move to first base will be permanent, the telephonic equivalent of a farewell handshake for the homegrown slugger and de facto captain who didn’t play this season because of a spring-training knee injury that required surgery.

It wasn’t surprising that the Phillies chose to move on from Hoskins. But it also signaled that they don’t feel an urge to change the mix from their overall aggressiveness at the plate. Because for all of Hoskins’ streakiness over the years, his career chase rate is 22%, a selective approach from the right side of the plate that would have counterbalanced Castellanos and Turner.

If anything, Dombrowski thinks hitting coach Kevin Long can spur improvement, especially among younger players. He cited Bryson Stott’s chase rate this season (29.6%), up from his rookie year (28.2%), and suggested the trend is reversible.

“Second year in the big leagues full-time, tough year, the league adjusts to you,” Dombrowski said of Stott, who did flirt with hitting .300 and made consistent contact for much of the season before fading late. “I think some of that will just come from Bryson Stott continuing to be better in that regard. He should be a patient hitter.”

The Phillies are also making changes to their hitting department. They let go assistant hitting coach Jason Camilli after the NLCS, and Dombrowski hinted that his replacement will concentrate on strategies to reduce specific hitters’ chase tendencies.

But Castellanos and Turner aren’t suddenly going to be more selective, either.

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“As much as I hate to say this, some hitters, you can talk to them a lot, they’re still going to chase,” Dombrowski said. “That’s just the way it is. Some guys chase more than others. I don’t think we’re going to make Turner, let’s say, a more disciplined-type guy. But I would hope that as time goes on we can get a little bit less chase out of him. Same thing with Castellanos.”

The truth is, even if they wanted to alter the composition of the lineup, the Phillies don’t have many movable pieces. Castellanos has three years and $60 million left on his contract. Kyle Schwarber is halfway through a four-year, $79 million deal. Realmuto is owed $46.2 million through 2025. Harper and Turner are signed through 2031 and 2033, respectively.

By keeping Harper at first base, the Phillies could pursue an outfielder who could help improve the lineup’s overall strike-zone discipline. Boston’s Alex Verdugo (22.2% chase rate this season, 25.6% career) is available, but he’s a left-handed hitter and the Red Sox need starting pitching. The free-agent market is weak. The Phillies passed on Hernández, Tommy Pham, and Hunter Renfroe at the trade deadline. They had interest in Harrison Bader, but mostly for his defense.

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“We talked a little bit about the makeup of the team; I’m not sure how much that’s going to change,” Dombrowski said. “When you look at our overall offensive club, it was pretty good. Perhaps we’ll come up with some other ideas to help us in that regard. But that’s a topic that we’ll continue to talk about.”

At least until the sting of Game 7 subsides. And that’s going to take a while.