Kyle Gibson reminds the lifeless-looking Phils the season’s still young and they should have fun playing the game

NEW YORK — Last Thursday night, Kyle Gibson’s parents were watching the Phillies game on television, as they normally do. Aaron Nola was on the mound and throwing well, but Gibson’s mother noticed something was off.

“When you guys took the field, you didn’t look too excited,” she told her son a few days later. “What’s going on?”

Gibson shared the observation with a few of his teammates, and realized that he was not alone.

“[Nick] Castellanos had a family member who said the same thing,” Gibson said. “Why does it not look like we’re having fun?”

This has been rough stretch for the Phillies. After Saturday’s night’s 8-2 loss to the New York Mets, they had fallen to 9½ games back in the NL East. They had lost nine of their last 13 games, and had lost eight games against the Mets alone. They were five games below .500 for the first time since 2020.

But beyond the losing, there is a sentiment among the fans and media that the team looks lifeless. It doesn’t look excited enough when it wins, and it doesn’t look upset enough when it loses. The Phillies seem to lack fight.

Not everyone agrees. Manager Joe Girardi, for example, feels that what the fans see is simply a reflection of the team not winning, but that the team has energy nonetheless. First baseman Rhys Hoskins also takes this stance.

“I think there’s usually a difference in energy from when you lose and when you win,” Hoskins said. “We try to be as consistent as possible with the way that we approach the game and the things that we can control. Do we need to be better about that? No doubt. I think if we were as good as we set out to be at controlling what we can control we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

“But to me, the guys that walk into this room every single day walk in the same that they did yesterday, and will probably walk in here tomorrow the same. That’s all we can try to do, be as professional as we can and keep our heads down.”

Gibson, conversely, sides more with his parents. So does Castellanos.

“I don’t know how to describe the energy now, but it’s obviously not where it needs to be,” Castellanos said, “because we’re not playing like we should be.”

Clearly, whether the energy in the clubhouse needs fixing is up for debate. But if it does need fixing, how do you fix it? Gibson believes the solution is to tap into what drew players to the game in the first place: To have fun. To savor the wins, and not get bogged down by the losses. But most importantly, to play with nothing to lose, which should be easy enough at this point.

“We’re already behind the eight ball,” he said. “We’re a really dang good team. There’s a freedom that comes with playing with nothing to lose.

“I think it looks like we are not having fun because the expectations are really high. Even when you win a game, it’s easy to say, ‘Great, we won today, but we’re still 10 games off from where we want to be.’ I think that’s an attitude that has to be flipped. If we truly believe it’s an 162-game season, if we truly believe that we have the right people and we’re doing the right things, then in 162 games, that is when we can be disappointed or not. What good does it do to be disappointed about unmet expectations when your end goal is nowhere in sight?”

Sometimes when the Phillies’ young hitters are about to go to the on-deck circle, Gibson will tell them to act like they’re playing backyard Wiffle Ball. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they should swing for the fences, but rather that they should remind themselves that playing in the big leagues is a privilege, not a right, and that they should enjoy it.

“You have to go out there and act like it’s the last time you get to play this kids’ game,” he said. “I’m 34 years old. Who knows how much longer I’m going to play? So I might be annoying to some of these guys, but I’m not going to sulk much. Yeah, I’m going to be disappointed when I throw poorly. I’m going to be disappointed when we lose. But I’m not going to be a guy that’s too quiet. Because I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to do this. I’m going to enjoy it.

“The best teams are going to win 90 out of 162 games, so they’re going to lose 72 times. You have to be able to understand that if you’re going to lose 72 times a year, you can’t get upset by one of them. Because it’s going to happen again. You’re going to lose again at some point. You have to separate the two, and I think the only way to do that is have fun all the time.

“We’re all disappointed because we haven’t met our own expectations for ourselves. But we have to be mentally strong and realize that nobody set a goal for 45 games into a year. Nobody said at the beginning of the year, ‘Hey, at 45 games we want to be 25-and-20.’ We didn’t even talk about that. Why? Because it’s about 162 games. We know where we want to be at the end of 162. And we have to stay focused on that.”

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