Phillies

Shame on Us Fans for Making the Phillies Too Tight

By Coggin Toboggan

Published: Oct 7th, 2025 · 10:51 AM EDT

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I’m glad someone finally stood up for the Phillies. Say what you want about Nick Castellanos, about the season he’s having, but he’s the only one man enough in that clubhouse to tell the truth, to direct the team’s anger in the proper direction after dropping two games at home to the Dodgers in the NLDS, effectively sealing their fate for an early postseason exit yet again.

He’s the only one brave enough to a point a finger at the real reason the team has been so inept in the playoffs for the last two seasons.

The fans.

Good for Nick for standing up to the 43,000 bullies who came to games one and two to watch their 96-win team scrape together just a combined 13 hits and five runs, while the bullpen leaks oil faster than a DeLorean at a Comic Con. Let’s forget about the boneheaded decision to try and bunt one of your slowest players on the team to third base in the bottom of the ninth with no outs when the Dodgers knew it was coming, and let’s forget about getting a good jump or a good lead to ensure you’d get to third instead of being thrown out by two steps and dooming any chance at a fun comeback.

Because those aren’t the reasons the team lost. Oh no sir. Because as David Murphy reported in The Inquirer Monday night, Castellanos strongly hints it’s the fans who are making this team play like dogshit due to FEAR OF REPRISAL.

“When everything’s going good and you’re rolling it’s a [pain] to play here when you’re an opposing team because the environment is amazing,” Castellanos said. “But if we run into adversity and the tide shifts and now we’re playing more tight because we don’t want to be reprimanded for something bad.”

How true! It’s a shame fans can’t be 100% supportive during every single moment, every single pitch of a three-plus hour game in which their team can’t hit, can’t hold leads, and can’t run the bases properly. It’s not like through both games the crowd was BEGGING for a moment to explode, but had to sit and watch the latest debacle of Blake Snell and his impressive eyebags utterly dominate for six innings, giving up just one inconsequential bloop hit.

It’s the perfect time to really let the fans know they let the team down.

How can they not CHEER that offensive performance? It’s that negativity that has led to our top-three hitters collecting two hits in two games. You know why? It’s because the fans are SCARING the roster, scaring them so much that they’re completely tight at the threat of being “reprimanded” by the mean old Phillies faithful in the stands of Citizens Bank Park. Hard to play with the wind in your face, after all:

“I think that the stadium is alive on both sides, right?” Castellanos said after his starring role in a wild ninth inning that nearly saw the Phillies snatch victory from the jaws of defeat before defeat snatched it right back. “When the game is going good, it’s wind at our back, but when the game is not going good, it’s wind in our face. The environment can be with us, and the environment can be against us.”

Nobody likes to be reprimanded. And fans should be 100% supportive 100% of the time, no matter the situation. I mean, let’s say hypothetically just for the sake of argument, if a highly-paid member of the Phillies outfield suddenly finds himself in a platoon after underperforming all season and he begins openly pouting and sulking in the dugout during the season, fans should support that! Always! It’s purely a hypothetical situation, though, so I guess we’ll never know how fans would react to something as unprofessional as that.

At least the Phillies now head to the friendly confines of Dodgers Stadium where they can relax and live up to their full potential. After all, including the 2023 postseason, the Phillies sport a tremendous 2-5 record on the road. This is easy money here, gang! No fans reprimanding the squad, holding them back… it’s a 100% guaranteed lock they take both games in Los Angeles with the winds at their backs before returning to the sea of negativity in Philadelphia.

Hopefully we’ll get to enjoy the next two games safe and far away from the action, where the boys are loosey goosey, just enjoying baseball, and surely living up to expectations.

And if they do come back to Citizens Bank Park for game 5? Let’s try and be better, Philadelphia. No more reprimanding. No more wind in their face. To be safe, maybe we just stay home for that one? We can only hurt their chances at this point.