The Phillies are chasing plenty this season — especially pitches out of the strike zone

The Phillies have swung at 31.7% of pitches outside the strike zone, the highest rate in the NL and second-highest in baseball.

Phillies shortstop Trea Turner has swung at 37% of pitches outside the strike zone this season, up from 28.1% over his career.Read moreYong Kim / Yong Kim / Staff Photographer

by Scott Lauber

Published May 31, 2023, 1:01 p.m. ET

NEW YORK — One-third of the way through the season, the Phillies are chasing.

Chasing the division-leading Braves, the nemesis Mets, and five other teams for six playoff spots in a watered-down National League. Chasing the feeling of going 65-46 over the final four months last season and making an exhilarating October sprint to the World Series. Chasing a stable No. 5 starter and more hits with runners in scoring position.

Mostly, though, they are chasing too many pitches.

It isn’t one or two slumping hitters, either. It’s a lineup-wide epidemic. As a team, the Phillies have swung at 31.7% of pitches outside the strike zone, according to Statcast, the highest rate in the NL and second-highest in baseball behind the White Sox (33.2%) entering play Wednesday. The league average was 28.2%.

Few pitchers live outside the strike zone more than Mets first-year starter Kodai Senga, with a fastball that rides above the zone and a “ghost forkball” that disappears below it. The best approach, then, is to force him to throw strikes. He walked at least three batters in all but one of his first nine major league starts.

But in the opener of a three-game series in New York, with Senga throwing 58 of 100 pitches out of the zone, the Phillies chased 42% of them. They didn’t draw a walk against him. And they swung and missed 22 times, 12 on the forkball.

As much as any pitcher, Senga turned the Phillies’ aggressiveness against them. But he’s hardly alone in exploiting them. They were built to hit but rank 22nd in the majors in runs per game (4.20) in large part because they’re 27th in on-base plus slugging with runners in scoring position (.665).

And there’s a common denominator in all of it.

“The chasing,” manager Rob Thomson said. “That’s the biggest thing for me. On the nights that we don’t chase, we have good at-bats, we work counts, we get the starter out fairly early, get his pitch count up. The walks go up. But when we chase, we struggle.”

OK, so how do they fix it?

Well, maybe they don’t.

Here’s the thing: The Phillies’ lineup is filled with aggressive hitters. And neither Thomson nor hitting coach Kevin Long balk at them swinging at pitches early in the count. It’s an approach that has worked in the past. Last season, the Phillies chased 30.9% of pitches outside the strike zone, tied for the fourth-highest rate in the majors, but still managed to rank seventh in runs per game (4.61).

“We have a lot of hitters on this team,” said Nick Castellanos, who had the seventh-highest chase rate (39%) among 161 hitters with at least 170 plate appearances through Tuesday. “If you look at our careers in total, I’ve always been someone that looks to hit the baseball; Trea [Turner], he seems like somebody that’s gotten to where he is because he’s looking to hit the baseball. I’ve talked to J.T. [Realmuto]. He’s also somebody that likes to hit the baseball.

“And that’s the tough part. Because that’s what makes us really good hitters. But the flip side on that is you can get yourself out and your on-base percentage can suffer a little bit.”

The difference, it seems, is rooted in pitch recognition. Turner alluded to it, noting that his “decision-making has been pretty hit or miss” en route to a 37% chase rate that far exceeds his career mark (28.1%).

“I feel like when you’re going good, you don’t think about any of those things,” Turner said. “You’re just hitting and reacting.”

And when they’re not going good?

“Maybe guys try to do too much at times,” Thomson said. “We’ve got to have better at-bats, plain and simple.”

The team-wide struggles also magnify another painfully slow start for Kyle Schwarber. With Rhys Hoskins lost for the season, Schwarber is left as the Phillies’ most discerning hitter. His 17% walk rate is actually up from both last season (12.9%) and his career average (13.3%). But his swings and misses are also up more than ever (34%, from 29.7% in his career), and he’s batting .166.

Add it all up, and the Phillies will lug a 25-29 record into Wednesday night’s game against the Mets. It’s the same as their 54-game mark last season, although they actually had a positive run differential then (plus-18). Now, it’s minus-40, better than only the Marlins (minus-46) and Rockies (minus-55) in the NL.

But here’s the silver lining: The league is either riddled with parity or rife with mediocrity, depending on your view. Only seven NL teams are above .500; only the Dodgers (34-22), Braves (32-23), and upstart Diamondbacks (32-23) are more than two games over .500. All it would take is a modest run to vault the Phillies into at least wild-card pole position.

The schedule is tougher than it was last June, when the Phillies reeled off 19 wins in 27 games (mostly against noncontenders) to climb back into the playoff race. Still, the opportunity is there for the Phillies to seize it again, if only they would. But after back-to-back wins on Friday and Saturday against the Braves, the Phillies dropped back-to-back games Sunday night in Atlanta and Tuesday night in New York.

And so, it seems there’s another thing the Phillies are chasing: consistency. It’s been almost as elusive as those tantalizing pitches out of the strike zone.