Struggling Phillies hold a team meeting: ‘Everybody in here knows what to do’

At 3 p.m. Wednesday, the Phillies dressed in their red pinstriped jerseys, walked out to center field, and stood together on a riser to pose for a previously scheduled team photo.

Then, for about 20 minutes, they retreated to the clubhouse.

A team meeting?

“My policy is I don’t announce meetings,” manager Rob Thomson said. “What happens in the clubhouse stays in the clubhouse.”

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The players faithfully abided by Thomson’s policy. Mum was the word.

But they did meet before batting practice, a source confirmed, and although the details — including who called the meeting and how many people spoke — were unknown, the topic couldn’t be more clear. For weeks, the Phillies had the best record in baseball. Since the All-Star break, they have the second-worst, behind only the White Sox, who would be relegated if baseball was soccer.

And it reached critical mass (they hope) Tuesday night with a listless 5-0 loss to a last-place Marlins team that traded its best hitter in May and half its roster last month.

If ever there was a time for a talk, this was it.

“The way we’ve been playing, obviously, has been unacceptable,” Bryce Harper said. “We just have to keep going. Everybody in here knows what to do and how to do their job. If you’re not walking in here every day ready to do your job, you probably shouldn’t be here.”

That was the backdrop for a series finale with the Marlins in which rookie Tyler Phillips put the Phillies in 3-0 and 5-2 holes. Let it be said, then, that they’ve gotten no bigger nor more cathartic hit this season than Kyle Schwarber’s opposite-field grand slam in the fourth inning.

All together now: Whew.

“I think it was just more energy,” Schwarber said after a had-to-have-it 9-5 victory. “You could feel it in the stadium. I feel like our guys are doing a real good job of weathering whatever’s happened the last couple weeks where we haven’t been playing our best baseball. We’ve got the right guys to get through this and come out better for it.”

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But before Wednesday’s win, the Phillies had 18 losses in 26 games, the last four by a combined 31-8 margin. Numbers like those can cause even the steadiest hand to tremble. And Thomson, steady as it gets, hinted Tuesday night at a potential lineup shake-up.

After sleeping on it, he settled on this: a one-game break for slumping Trea Turner.

There were other levers to pull. Thomson could’ve put Brandon Marsh on the bench, too, in favor of recently recalled lefty-hitting outfielder Cal Stevenson. Marsh struck out twice Tuesday night, giving him 17 whiffs in 36 at-bats, a surge in swings and misses that only highlights the 26-year-old’s recurring lack of contact.

Marsh is aware of the problem. He works diligently with the hitting coaches before games to rectify it. Thomson characterized the decision to remove Turner from the lineup as a chance to “spend some more time working on his swing.” If he sat Marsh, he could have framed it similarly.

Instead, Thomson suggested Marsh’s time on the bench will come later this week based on pitching matchups against the Nationals. Righty-hitting Weston Wilson figures to get playing time in left field, but that probably would be the case even if the Phillies were winning.

“We’ve got three lefties in the next series,” Thomson said, referring to Washington’s Mitchell Parker, Patrick Corbin, and MacKenzie Gore on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. “So that’s going to change the lineup.”

In that case, Thomson’s initial notion of a shake-up turned into a one-off tweak.

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Turner, who didn’t make himself available to reporters before the game, has emerged as the personification of the Phillies. Entering the All-Star break, he was batting .349 with a .941 OPS, and they were on pace to win 104 games. Since then, he’s batting .168 (16-for-95) with a .463 OPS and 20 strikeouts in 100 plate appearances, and the Phillies suddenly are in a three-team fight for one of two first-round playoff byes.

So Turner got a night to clear his head. Edmundo Sosa, the backup infielder who often has been an adrenaline shot when he has cracked the lineup, filled in at shortstop. It’s a solid bet Sosa will play one or two of the next three games at second base in place of lefty-hitting Bryson Stott.

But it’s one thing to bring back Turner, among the most dynamic players in the sport, after one game. It’s another to keep him in his familiar No. 2 spot in the order.

Last year, amid the worst slump of Turner’s career, Thomson dropped him to seventh and eventually eighth, the lowest he hit since he was a rookie in 2015. And although a supportive standing ovation at Citizens Bank Park was widely credited with extricating him from his malaise, the move down in the order surely helped, too.

Could Turner move down in the order again now?

“I don’t think so,” Thomson said. “Not yet.”

Nick Castellanos batted second in Turner’s absence and wouldn’t be a bad choice to stay there for a while. Through Tuesday, he was batting .301 and slugging .518 with an .874 OPS since the All-Star break.

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Like his teammates, Castellanos didn’t divulge a team meeting. A few weeks ago, Turner suggested meetings were necessary only to address a negative clubhouse culture or poor work habits. The Phillies haven’t encountered those issues.

“I’ve had team meetings in the past before that have been great, and I’ve had team meetings before that have sent the team in the opposite direction,” Castellanos said. “There’s been meetings where players have aired grievances, and it’s amazing because it needed to get aired. There’s also meetings that start, and there’s only one person that says something and no one else opens their mouth and it goes terribly.”

The Phillies haven’t played this poorly for this long since September 2018. It’s difficult to imagine things getting worse than Tuesday night.

“I believe in the group. I believe in the guys in this clubhouse,” Castellanos said. “Everybody is a professional. And even though we haven’t been winning a bunch of games, it’s not because all of a sudden we’re not working or we don’t care. Right? Everybody cares, and at the end of the day, that’s all you can ask for because I’ve been in clubhouses that don’t care.”