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Running Through the Phillies’ Lame-Ass Post-Game Quotes After Yet Another Sad Playoff Exit
By Matt Schultz
Published:
The Phillies’ postseason is over about as quickly as it began, and this era of Philadelphia baseball may be over with it. That’d be nice. Let’s do something else. This sucks.
After a Game 3 that had all the signatures of a pathetic Phillies performance (bad manager decisions, quiet bats, depth problems everywhere you look, Aaron Nola pitching like shit), the team spoke about the Wild Card disappointment, the season overall, and what the future may hold.
WARNING: If you’re still pissed about what we all just watched last night/the season as a whole/this era of Phillies baseball, these quotes will not help. They are infuriating. Just a heads up.
Bryce Harper
REPORTER: “Are you worried as this group gets older that it might not happen? Just because, you know, guys get older, performance starts to fade at some point?”
HARPER: “I don’t know. I can’t really answer that question. We haven’t played the games for next year or anything else. So. Each year is so different than the year before, so, um, I don’t really put stock into years before or what happened or anything else. You know, this was a brand new team. Obviously we had the guys that are part of that core group that we are. I’d imagine this team is going to look a lot different next year. The guys that are kind of leaving this clubhouse. So we’ll see.”
Hats off to the reporter who asked this question. It’s a good one and was worth asking, even though Bryce pretty much declined to give a real answer. Most of what he said is canned nonsense:
“Each year is different.” Wrong. The results are always the same: losing, disappointment, underperforming, etc., etc.
“This was a brand new team.” No it wasn’t. 26 players returned to play for the Phillies in 2026 after playing for the club in 2025.
Here they are:
Aaron Nola, Alan Rangel, Alec Bohm, Brandon Marsh, Bryce Harper, Bryson Stott, Cristopher Sanchez, Edmundo Sosa, Garrett Stubbs, J.T. Realmuto, Jesus Luzardo, Jhoan Duran, Jose Alvarado, Kyle Schwarber, Lou Trivino III, Max Lazar, Nolan Hoffman, Orion Kerkering, Otto Kemp, Rafael Marchán, Seth Johnson, Taijuan Walker, Tanner Banks, Tim Mayza, Trea Turner, and Zack Wheeler.
“I’d imagine this team is going to look a lot different next year.” This Bryce line is getting aggregated a lot as if it was some big statement/warning shot to Dave Dombrowski. I don’t see it that way, especially when you hear the quote in its full context. Bryce sounded checked-out while saying it. He was just saying stuff. I’ll believe this roster will change when I see it.
Don Mattingly
REPORTER: “Don, you ended up having Wheeler available for a little bit of length. Was there any consideration in giving him the start? And then what’d you think of both Zack and Aaron tonight?”
MATTINGLY: “Yeah there was, we talked about, you know, both scenarios. The group kind of came to the fact that felt like Noles was on solid rest. If he can get us, you know, into the game at all and have Zack, you know, after that. Obviously that didn’t go that well.”
REPORTER: “Do you feel like the fact that you guys had to take it to the last day of the regular season with the way that last week went, did that make things more difficult for you in this playoff series?“
MATTINGLY: “Oh, no question. You know, you’d love to be able to set your pitching up and then be rested and all that kind of stuff, but that’s not the way it went. You know, we had to fight to get ourselves in, and to do what we had to do to get in. And we had to do, basically every game in this series. Yeah, so, you never know how that goes.”
A lot of people are ripping Mattingly for starting Nola last night, but hearing him talk through the logic of it all, I’ll admit, I do see where he’s coming from. The team playing like dogshit through the end of the regular season put him in a pretty brutal spot. He couldn’t set up his pitching rotation going into the Wild Card, and I can’t put that on Mattingly — that’s on the bats that went ice cold in the last three weeks of September. That’s team construction. That’s on Dombo. We’ve talked about that on this website plenty.
Now, it’s easy to play Monday morning quarterback and say Wheels should’ve gotten the start in Game 3 after the trainwreck we all watched, but I don’t think Mattingly’s plan was an awful one from the jump. Nola had been pitching well lately, and ended up having a really solid second half of the season (3.33 ERA and 1.24 WHIP across 14 starts since the All-Star break). All you’re asking Nola to do is give you three to four innings with limited damage done. Mattingly should be able to expect that. We should all be able to expect that. We shouldn’t have to pitch Wheeler on short rest because we’re afraid Nola is going to allow 3 runs in the first inning. But alas.
Alec Bohm
REPORTER: “How weird of a feeling is it for you, going into the offseason? The uncertainty.” (Alec Bohm is a free agent going into this offseason).
BOHM: “I don’t really know, to be honest with you. I haven’t really given it a ton of thought. Yeah, I honestly don’t even know, to be honest with you.”
REPORTER: “That being said, do you want to be back?”
BOHM: “Absolultely. To be honest with you, I have no idea what to expect. But, I would — I mean, I would love to be back. If they would have me back. So, like I said, I, I don’t know what to expect, but. Definitely feel like, uh, we have unfinished business here and I want to be a part of the team that gets it done, for sure. Like I said, a lot of it’s out of my hands, but, you know, I would definitely like to.”
Get this guy off my favorite team please. I don’t want to hear about how good he was after the All-Star break. I do not care. Gotta go.
Trea Turner
REPORTER: “What will you do to reset in the offseason?”
TURNER: “That’s a good question. Got a lot of work to do. Kind of just go over everything and just figure out as much as I can, find answers. See what I did bad. But I feel like, you know, there’s — I think this year is the biggest question mark for me offensively in a long time. And I gotta figure that out. So, definitely gonna have a lot of work to do there, and I’ll do it.“
Trea Turner’s regular season: 242/.297/.378 (.675 OPS).
Trea Turner in the Wild Card series: 1-for-11 (.091/.154/.182, .336 OPS).
Dogshit. Good thing he’s only under contract for 7 more years. Thank you, Dombrowski.
Matt Schultz is a comedy and sports writer from Philadelphia. He’s written extensively for ClickHole, The Onion, and Conan O’Brien’s Team Coco. His work has been featured in Vulture, Deadspin, The A.V. Club, Paste Magazine, and other publications. Much of his sports journalism can be found on college basketball websites that don’t exist anymore (PhilaHoops Heads rise up…) email: M.Schultz@sportradar.com