Memorial Day weekend is here already, and it’s a solemn holiday for the country as we pause to reflect on the sacrifices that were made by our brave men and women in the military for this great nation. It’s also an important marker in the baseball calendar, of course, it’s known as the ‘unofficial’ start of summer as well. How are the Phillies doing as a team on this holiday? We’ve seen a couple of wins from them when they have needed to play their best against their NL East opponent, the Atlanta Braves. Bryce Harper has simply been a catalyst for the team since returning to the baseball diamond. Bryson Stott has also been a catalyst.
Embed from Getty ImagesThe Phillies currently sit at just 2 games under .500 and have a record of 25-27 in an important quarter marker of the season, we’ve seen some unpredictability in this team in a lot of areas of their play. The season started with some devastating news. No Bryce Harper and no Rhys Hoskins to start the season was a real setback for this team. Starting pitching, as mentioned in yesterday’s post here at fightinphillies.com wasn’t too good either. We have expected our top two pitchers to pitch like aces, and so far, they haven’t lived up to that expectation.
Embed from Getty ImagesA shining star reborn has been Nick Castellanos, he has given some Phillies fans renewed hope in both him and the team as he has been producing some clutch hitting and great fielding so far in this pitch clock year that has made time accelerate simply because it’s shortened most of the games that the Phillies have played in so far. Here are Nick’s last 5 games:
| Date | Tm | Opp | Result | Pos | AB | R | H | 2B | RBI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-05-27 | PHI | ATL | W 2-1 | RF | 4 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| 2023-05-26 | PHI | ATL | W 6-4 | RF | 5 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2023-05-25 | PHI | ATL | L 5-8 | RF | 4 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| 2023-05-24 | PHI | ARI | W 6-5 (10) | RF | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2023-05-23 | PHI | ARI | L 3-4 | RF | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
So all in all, the Phillies are hanging tough, even though they haven’t been setting the baseball world on fire. That is sort of the scary part. The fact that the Phillies have been at times very difficult to watch because of some poor play, and the fact that they are still very much into a race in the NL East, now being led by the Atlanta Braves, is intriguing going forward.
The fans have been behind this team 100 percent, though panning Trea Turner‘s bad play so far with a hearty amount of boos, even Turner admitted though that he hasn’t been good, and that’s what Phillies fans appreciate… some honesty about the situation and then an attempt to get better. We saw that with Alec Bohm and Nick Castellanos and now Turner.
It’s the National stage for the Phillies today, the ESPN Sunday Night Baseball game of the week. Unfortunately, the Phils don’t have a marquee name pitcher going for them but the Braves do, so we’ll see how this game turns out. So far though, the Phils are ‘hanging tough’ on Memorial Day Weekend 2023, looking forward to seeing more from this team!
