The Philadelphia Phillies Are No Longer a 'Good Baseball Team'

After a brutal display over the weekend, the Philadelphia Phillies can no longer call themselves a good baseball team.

Aug 10, 2024; Phoenix, Arizona, USA; Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Aaron Nola (27) on the mound in the fourth inning for a game against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field / Allan Henry-USA TODAY Sports

The Philadelphia Phillies are off on Monday after a 10-game road trip where they were completely embarrassed over the weekend by the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Whatever the players and coaches are doing with their time off needs to be something that figures out how to get this train back on the tracks.

The Phillies are a disaster right now.

There is no other way to put it after they went 4-6 away from home and were outscored by 12 runs, including a ridiculous 23-6 margin in their last two games.

Since coming out of the All-Star break, Philadelphia is now 7-15 with only one series win.

Unlike what the players in the clubhouse have repeatedly stated when asked about their struggles, they are not "a good team" right now.

Good teams don't get embarrassed for two games straight following a walk-off loss against a group who broke their hearts in the playoffs last year.

Good teams don't have the ninth-worst batting average (.241), 11th-worst OPS (.711), and 12th-fewest runs scored (95) since the All-Star break.

And good teams certainly don't have the eighth-most earned runs allowed (109), give up the seventh-most hits (206), and allow their opponents to have the seventh-highest batting average against them (.274).

"We're not playing our best baseball right now. We just have to keep going, understand we have a long season to go, and we just have to keep playing our game," Bryce Harper said after Sunday's game according to Patrick Brown of MLB.com.

What exactly their game is, has now become the question.

Forget the statistics that were laid out above regarding how this Phillies team has performed in recent weeks, they visually don't even look like the same group of guys the city has embraced during the past two years.

There's no swagger, there's no confidence, there's no joy.

They look like a team that peaked too early.

Maybe they know that, and all their frustrations surrounding their poor play has now turned into defeat, accepting the fact that whatever was working so well for them when they were dominating Major League Baseball, is now no longer there.

Or maybe, these games have provided Philadelphia an opportunity to rebuild themselves after hitting rock bottom, using their day off to figure out how to find a spark and start putting together some wins against the lowly Miami Marlins and Washington Nationals.

If the Phillies want to win a World Series like they said they did back in Spring Training, they have to figure out something fast, because right now, not only are they no longer a good baseball team, they are playing like one of the worst in the MLB.