It was cold and rainy. The crowd, dressed in hoodies and ponchos, were breaking out into E-A-G-L-E-S chants. The score was Philadelphia 14, San Francisco 3.

Yep, one might think it was a football game.

But here were the differences:

  1. It was May, not December
  2. It was at Citizens Bank Park, not Lincoln Financial Field
  3. The fans were bored in a lopsided game, thus the chants
  4. The Philadelphia team was winning

(Note to self, Prepare for a lot of fun reactions to that last one)

So, yeah. It wasn’t a football game, although it had many of those ingredients. Instead, it was the Phillies winning their fourth straight, bludgeoning the Giants and their awful pitching staff and improving their major league-best record to 23-11 and opening up a 1 1/2 game lead over the Atlanta Braves.

While it was mostly smooth sailing on a night no one wanted to be out in the elements for the Phillies, for all the good that happened, the big stories that came out of the day were all the things that threatened to derail one of the best starts in franchise history:

  • Trea Turner will be gone for at least six weeks
  • Alec Bohm had to leave the game in the third inning with right hip tightness
  • Ranger Suarez slipped on the mound and looked like he tweaked something
  • the resolution (at least for now) of the Phillies starting rotation traffic jam at the back end, resulting in pulling a guy out who’s been off to an incredible start

We’ll tackle each of those, but first, just for a historical perspective, I wanted to share where each of the Phillies teams that reached the postseason were after 34 games played in those seasons and compare them to the current Phillies team.

  • 1915 Phillies – 19-15
  • 1950 Phillies – 21-12-1
  • 1976 Phillies – 25-9 (won 101 games)
  • 1977 Phillies – 17-17 (won 101 games)
  • 1978 Phillies – 19-15
  • 1980 Phillies – 19-15
  • 1981 Phillies – 21-13
  • 1993 Phillies – 24-10
  • 2007 Phillies – 15-19
  • 2008 Phillies – 19-15
  • 2009 Phillies – 18-16
  • 2010 Phillies – 21-13
  • 2011 Phillies – 23-11 (won 102 games)
  • 2022 Phillies – 17-17
  • 2023 Phillies – 15-19

This year’s team is tied for the third-best start when compared to all of those postseason squads, and two of the other three went on to crack the century mark on total wins.

The other thing to note, and yes, it’s a long season as evidenced that none of those other three teams reached this crazy number I’m about to share, but the 2024 Phillies are now on pace to win 110 games, which would not only absolutely shatter the franchise record, but would tie for the fifth-most wins in a season EVER by any major league team.

The Phillies are finding different ways to win ballgames. Some nights, it’s their starting pitching being dominant. Sometimes it’s their bullpen having a strong game. Sometimes, they hit five homers in a game. And sometimes they grind opposing pitching staffs into the ground:


Like Saturday.

The Phillies had 12 hits, 10 walks, and struck out only four times. They haven’t had that many hits, that many walks and that few strikeouts in a game since 2005.

This team goes to extremes sometimes – like striking out 18 times and walking just three times in Los Angeles Wednesday – yet they won both games.The Phillies scored five runs in the first inning Saturday without an extra base hit. That’s hard to do, but it went like this:

Walk, Walk, single, hit by pitch, single, double play, single, single, single

They chased San Francisco starting pitcher Keaton Winn after just 2/3 of an inning. They reached base against every pitcher the Giants brought into the game until the bottom of the eighth when San Francisco moved a position player onto the hill and the Phillies just swung at anything to get the long night over with in a 1-2-3 inning.

Before that, they made Giants pitchers throw 184 pitches in seven innings. That’s an average of 26.3 pitches per inning. That’s crazy high. for one game.

One guy who has started to have much better approaches at the plate has been Bryson Stott. He’s really started to make good contact in the past week and while he hasn’t always gotten on base, on Saturday he was rewarded for it:


Stott had two hits, two walks, scored two runs and had two RBIs.

In his last five games he’s 6-for-15 with three extra-base hits and has added five walks for a .400/.571/.867 slash line.

“For the last little bit he’s hit the ball hard and not gotten a lot to show for it,” manager Rob Thomson said. “But he’s put together some really good at bats the last week.”

That’s a good sign because the Phillies are going to need someone to step up offensively in Turner’s absence. Which reminds me, we’ve got to get to all those things I mentioned earlier that were concerning despite the great start for the Phillies. So here goes in rapid fire:

Turner injury

Turner spoke again before the game Saturday and told reporters he would miss at least six weeks with a left hamstring strain and returning any time before that would be a win.

“Right now, I’m O.K., he told Matt Gelb of The Athletic. “But I’m sure after two or three days, I’ll already be sick of it. It’s going to be tough watching. But I’ll try to help out any way I can. Talk to guys. I’m still in it with them.”

For now, the plan is for Edmundo Sosa to fill in, but Stott is going to start to take regular grounders at shortstop during infield practice and will play some over there with Whit Merrifield at second base.

Merrifield, who got off to a brutally slow start and was hitting just .107 on April 15th, has a six-game hitting streak going, which continued with a homer Saturday.


In those six games, Merrifield has gone 9-for-20 (.450) with four extra base hits. He’s starting to look a lot more like the guy the Phillies thought they were signing when they inked him to a contract on the eve of Spring Training.

Bringing in Merrifield was for exactly a situation such as this – a veteran who has long been an everyday player who could step in when needed and help the team not skip a beat. He’s going to be a crucial part of this offense while Turner is out.

Bohm injury

Alec Bohm hurt himself on a swing in the bottom of the second, slipping in the batter’s box on the wet field.

He played in the field in the top of the third and made a nice play on a grounder to throw out the speedy Jung Hoo Lee at first, but then he was removed from the game. The Phillies announced that Bohm was feeling right hip tightness but said that removing him was precautionary.

After the game Thomson said he expects Bohm back in the lineup Sunday.

Bohm, himself, shrugged off the injury.

“It was nothing crazy,” he said. “It’s just that with the (field) conditions, I understand there’s no need (to push through it). I’m not worried about it.”

That’s a sigh of relief for the Phillies, who couldn’t afford to lose their hottest hitter one day after losing their second-hottest hitter to injury. It could have been crippling had Bohm had to miss significant time too.

He did extend his hitting streak to 17 games on the same at bat he suffered the injury too, with an RBI single to left field. So, that wasn’t impacted by the short stint in the game.

Ranger danger

Suarez is off to an even more incredible start than his team. He improved to 6-0 with a win Saturday, becoming the first Phillies pitcher since Roy Halladay in 2010 to win six of his first seven starts to a season.

An even more impressive stat is this: Suarez became just the second pitcher in franchise history (since 1901) to make six straight starts where he had a win, a quality start (6IP, 3 or fewer ER), with fewer than two walks in each start.

The other guy to do that? Grover Cleveland Alexander – in 1916.

Suarez, who was NL pitcher of the month in April, picked up where he left off and gave the Phillies six good innings on a night that it was difficult to pitch well, both because of the weather and the fact that sometimes, when you are staked a nine-run lead, you’re just trying to get outs and maybe pitch to contact a little more than usual.

Yet, Suarez was still pretty solid. Although there was a scare in the fourth inning when he seemed to plant wrong and feel something pull on a pitch. However, he shook it off, finished the inning, then got through two more. There was no concern of an injury from either manger or pitcher postgame.

Starting rotation

Since the Phillies didn’t need to use Cristopher Sanchez out of the bullpen because of the rain interrupting the game Saturday, he will now make his regularly scheduled start on Tuesday against Toronto.

This moves Spencer Turnbull to the bullpen, and he is available there starting Sunday.

It’s incredibly difficult to take a guy like Turnbull out of the rotation considering how good he’s been. He gave the Phillies six starts that ranged from good on the low end to superb on the high end. He has a 1.67 ERA and a 0.835 WHIP.

But the Phillies want to see if Taijuan Walker can return to form and want to give him the runway to do so. Couple that with a need for another righthanded arm in the bullpen with Seranthony Dominguez working through some struggles and Yunior Marte on the I.L. and the Phillies are a little thin from that side.

Don’t expect Turnbull to be the guaranteed long man either. Sure, he can provide length if a starter has a brief outing, but the plan, for now, seems to be to use Turnbull much like they did Matt Strahm a season ago – almost as a jack-of-all-trades who can come into a game at any time and at any leverage.

The difference is Strahm started to show signs of slowing down after his hot start, which prompted that move to the bullpen and made sense. This decision is a lot tougher – one Thomson admitted Friday is one of the hardest he’s had to make since becoming the Phillies manager.

We’ll see if it works out, but if you asked me right now, after Zach Wheeler, Aaron Nola and Suarez, which starting pitcher I trust the most would be Turnbull.

It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.

One final note…

The Phillies waited until after the game and after all the postgame interviews to announce one final move – Ricardo Pinto, who was DFA’d last week to make room for Walker, elected free agency and not to go the Lehigh Valley after he went unclaimed on waivers.

He was a fun story for one night when he made the drive from Rochester, New York, got to the game late, and then was called on to pitch multiple innings and get the Phillies a win in early April. But he was brutal after that. I find it surprising that he elected free agency – unless he has an opportunity for a better payday in a league that’s not affiliated with an MLB team.