The Phillies’ winning streak came to an end at one game with a 5-3 loss to the Dodgers on Monday night. It’s the 7th straight series in which they’ve lost the opening game. This is a good summary of the defeat:

Three first-pitch pop outs. That’s less than one week after the Phillies went to extra innings with the Yankees and had a chance to win game 2 of that series, but in the bottom of the 10th AND 11th Bryson Stott and Alec Bohm swung at the first pitch, popping out and lining out to center. They lost that game 7-6 in the 12th.

If it seems to you like the Phillies often swing at the first pitch, your hunch is correct. According to the Sport Radar data, the Phils:

  • have MLB’s sixth-highest first pitch swing percentage (33.6%)
  • have swung at the 5th-most first pitches total (1,438)
  • have the third-most 1st pitch hits (177)
  • are 17th in the league in getting first-pitch balls (1,565)
  • are 2nd in the league in getting first-pitch strikes (2,722)
  • are 7th in MLB in first pitch home runs (28)
  • tied for first with 6 leadoff home runs (aka the “Schwarber” stat)

When you look at that data, it syncs up and makes sense. They swing a lot at the first pitch, so they have a lot of first pitch hits. And if you’re going to see a lot of strikes early, go ahead and put the ball in play.

The problem is a situational one, and it creeps in each season the closer we get to October. They just don’t seem to challenge opposing relievers. They don’t do the best job of working counts in the later innings or making it difficult for the opposition. Monday night is the perfect example because Nick Castellanos opened the inning against David Hudson, took a first pitch ball, swung twice and missed, then laid off a 1-2 slider that was out of the zone. He then fouled off a fastball, laid off another fastball, fouled off a slider, then took the 5th slider into right field for a single. Eight pitches right there. Fantastic, disciplined at-bat. Then you had the Stott/Hays/Stubbs trio go 1-2-3 on first pitch swings and that was it. Hudson threw 11 pitches in the game and eight of them were to Castellanos. He only needed three more to get the game’s final three outs.


That’s always been the issue. The Phillies typically do a good job of pouncing if they get the pitch they want right from the jump, but when it comes to these crucial, late-game situations, the philosophy never seems to change. In this case, you had Castellanos work a lead-off single to bring the tying run to the plate, then it went straight to hell from there.