What the World Series teams and one stellar August can show the Phillies about improving in 2027

In reflecting on his first season with the Phillies, and especially his 157-day term as interim manager, Don Mattingly thought about two teams.

There was the team that batted .270, led the majors with a .353 on-base percentage, and averaged 5.3 runs over 28 games in August. And then there was the club that batted .234, reached at a .303 clip, and averaged 4.2 runs in the other 134 games.

“I think the August month tells you what we can be,” Mattingly said last week, after accepting a two-year contract to stay on as full-time manager. “And I hate that it was an outlier because you feel like it could be [that way] all the time.”

Maybe. It wasn’t long ago, after all, that the Phillies had a high-powered offense. From 2022 to 2025, they scored the fifth-most runs of any team in baseball and ranked third in both on-base percentage and slugging.

» READ MORE: Dave Dombrowski didn’t have an ‘elite’ season. And turning it around in 2027 won’t be easy.

But with mostly the same hitters this season, they slid to 19th in runs, 23rd in on-base percentage, and 24th in slugging. So, maybe August was about bullying the pitching-weak Nationals, Cardinals, Twins, and Angels. Because sample-size math suggests the 2026 Phillies were characterized less by assembly-line efficiency than below-the-line production.

The question, then, as president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski convened organizational meetings this week, is how they can improve.

As ever, it comes down to the players. The Phillies were below league average in OPS at every position except first base (mostly Bryce Harper), DH (Kyle Schwarber), and second base (Bryson Stott/Luis Arraez). Not on that list: Trea Turner, whose career-worst .675 mark was below average at shortstop, just as it would’ve been if he played second or third base or left field.

Turner’s theory for the teamwide offensive downturn: “Me,” he said after the Phillies got booted in the wild-card round. “It’s pretty simple. When you hit first or second, you get a lot of at-bats and kind of get things going. So, a lot of that’s on me.”

Fair enough. It’s also reasonable to believe that a 33-year-old two-time batting champion will rebound next year after 62- and 137-point plunges in average and OPS, respectively, from 2025 to 2026.

Team officials are hoping for a needle-moving rookie year from top prospect Aidan Miller, healthy at last after being crippled by a back condition for most of this season. And maybe the Phillies will finally add a middle-of-the-order right-handed bat, either through a trade or free agency.

But, as Mattingly put it, “the guys that we have, they’re not going anywhere.” And with the band — Harper, Schwarber, Turner, Stott, J.T. Realmuto, Justin Crawford, possibly Brandon Marsh — expected to mostly stay together, the manager’s ideas for changing the tune have more to do with adjustments to the overall approach than the personnel carrying it out.

Mattingly’s vision for the offense involves swinging at fewer pitches out of the strike zone, running the bases better and more aggressively, and making contact that isn’t always pulling the ball in the air.

Just like what he saw in August.

» READ MORE: With help from TB12, Aidan Miller is healthy, grateful for adversity, and primed to impact the Phillies in 2027

And what everyone has seen nightly in the postseason from the Brewers and Rays.

It’s more of an analog approach in an analytics age. A new hitting coach will presumably help espouse it. (Last week, the Phillies fired Kevin Long with two years left on his contract and despite his deeply rooted relationships with Harper, Turner, and Schwarber because they sought a new voice in the batting cage — and perhaps to throw red meat to angry fans.)

But it will also require buy-in from not only the players but also one of the most robust analytics departments in baseball.

“[August] showed that we can control the zone, we can swing at strikes, we can take our walks, we can do teamwide damage that way,” Mattingly said. “Like, if you said, ‘What do you want to be?’ That’s what I want to be. We’re creating traffic all the time; we’re putting pressure on teams. That would be where I would like to head.

“How do we get there? I don’t know. Can we get there? I think that’s something you’ve got to believe you can.”

At 29.9 feet per second, Turner averaged the 11th-fastest sprint speed among 567 players clocked by Statcast this season. Crawford tied for 22nd (29.6); Derek Hill tied for 27th (29.5).

Yet the Phillies were 19th in stolen-base attempts.

“I think we have speed that we don’t use,” Mattingly said. “I felt like we played a little cautious.”

Of course, it’s impossible to steal first base. And despite even their August uprising, the Phillies finished with only a .312 on-base percentage, tied for their lowest full-season mark since 1985.

» READ MORE: The Phillies will keep Trea Turner at shortstop for now: ‘He knows he has to be better’

Still, Mattingly’s point is well-taken. Crawford swiped at least 40 bases in three consecutive seasons in the minors. As a rookie this year, he attempted 21 steals, 48th among players who reached base at the same clip (.309) or better. He wound up swiping 17 bags.

Early in the season, first base coach Paco Figueroa said Crawford may have been “a little bit more conservative” on the bases, a common instinct for a 22-year-old in his first month in the majors.

“First time in the big leagues; 40,000 fans,” Figueroa said on The Inquirer’s Phillies Extra podcast. “He’s got the makeup and all the confidence in the world, but it’s just reminding him: Trust it.”

But even in August, Crawford’s most productive month with a .306 average and .358 on-base percentage in 84 plate appearances, he made only three steal attempts.

“He needs to be a guy that causes havoc, where he’s a 30- to 40- stolen-base guy,” Mattingly said. “To do that, you’ve got to get on base. He strikes out maybe a little more than he should, doesn’t walk as much as he should. He has to get where he controls the strike zone better. I think that’s a general theme for him.”

In other words, Crawford must be the Phillies’ version of Rays left fielder Chandler Simpson.

Drafted 53 picks after Crawford in 2022, Simpson was an equally polarizing prospect for the same reason: an extreme tendency to hit the ball on the ground. This season, their ground-ball rates were nearly identical (Simpson — 58.8%; Crawford — 57.5%), with Crawford actually making much harder contact (35.1% of balls hit at an exit velocity of 95 mph or harder compared to 13.6% for Simpson).

But Simpson put the ball in play in 86% of his plate appearances, led the majors with 61 infield hits, and was second with 14 bunt hits. Crawford put it in play 74% of the time, with only 31 infield hits and three bunt hits.

And after utilizing his speed to get on base more often, Simpson was daring. He led the American League with 46 steals and the majors with 60 attempts. He swiped more bags after the All-Star break (24) than Crawford did all season.

» READ MORE: The big offseason questions facing the Phillies: Core’s future, fixing the bullpen, and who’s managing?

It wasn’t only Crawford. Turner was on first or second base with the next base open 265 times; he attempted only 25 steals. Stott had 232 opportunities to run; he took off only 27 times — and went 27-for-27 in steal attempts.

Maybe it’s reflective of an organizational philosophy. Data-driven teams tend to be less risk-averse on the bases. And the Phillies employ more full-time analysts than any other team, according to a recent study by former major league executive Zack Scott of Four Rings Consulting.

To be fair, the Phillies did rank among the top-10 in steal attempts in 2024 (eighth), 2023 (ninth), and 2022 (tied for seventh). And Figueroa believes in creating havoc on the bases to apply pressure to the opposing defense.

Mattingly isn’t suggesting that the Phillies morph into the millennial version of Whitey Herzog’s Cardinals. But he sees an opportunity to run more often.

“I know [Stott] doesn’t really get thrown out, but if he gets thrown out three or four times but he steals an extra 10 bags, then I would like that,” Mattingly said. “I’d like Trea to be more aggressive. These are all conversations that we need to have with guys, so I’m just throwing it out. I want Craw to be aggressive.

“When we have chances to do that, I’d like to be able to do it.”

Every October, two teams advance to the World Series and their rosters become case studies in the other 28 clubs’ quest to improve.

There’s a lot about the Brewers and Rays that’s worth imitating.

Because hitting is more difficult than ever. The average fastball velocity has risen each year since 2021. Not coincidentally, eight of the 10 lowest batting averages by season since 1969 have come in the last decade, including .243 in 2024, .245 in 2025, and .244 this year.

In that run-scoring environment, offenses must be multidimensional.

Behold the Rays and Brewers, first and second in the majors, respectively, in bunt hits, infield hits, and sacrifice bunt attempts. The Rays were tied for first in steal attempts; the Brewers were third. The Brewers swung at the lowest rate of pitches outside the zone (26.9%); the Rays (30.7%) were a tick above league average. (The Phillies, by comparison, swung at 32.6%, the fourth-highest rate.)

» READ MORE: Alec Bohm represents changes that might be coming to the Phillies. Who else could be on the way out?

It scarcely mattered that the Rays were 22nd and the Brewers tied for 28th in homers. The Brewers scored the second-most runs in baseball, while the Rays were 12th.

“I’m watching playoff games, and you’re seeing teams, they fight, they foul off balls, they create more opportunity, and then they break through,” Mattingly said. “I feel like that’s what I would want us to be.”

But homers remain the most instant source of offense. Slugging is still vital. The small-ball Brewers outhomered the mighty Dodgers, 7-1, in a four-game, pennant-winning sweep. The Rays’ clinching victory in Game 6 of the AL Championship Series was powered by homers from Junior Caminero and Yandy Díaz.

Surely, then, the Phillies will go on a familiar pursuit for middle-of-the-order right-handed power. Randy Arozarena and Seiya Suzuki are free agents. The Phillies have scouted lefty-hitting Japanese slugger Teruaki Sato, though it’s unclear if they view him as a third baseman or a corner outfielder.

There’s also the question of how much they will spend, given their $239 million in luxury tax commitments for 2027 and uncertainty over MLB’s economic system in the next collective bargaining agreement. Even if the owners don’t succeed in their bid for a salary cap, the penalties imposed on the highest payrolls are almost certain to get harsher.

“One of the tricky questions, I don’t know what the rules are,” Dombrowski said last week. “Our ownership has been as open to doing things as anybody possibly can be. ... But we have a lot of high-salary guys at this point, so I think you have to figure out which way you go.”

In any case, Mattingly believes there’s one surefire way for the offense to move forward.

“We need to score in different ways,” he said. “Doesn’t just have to be Harp and Schwarb hitting a homer. It’s nice when you get the homer and you drive in runs like that. But I feel like, to be sustainable throughout the course of the year and into the playoffs, you’ve got to be able to find different ways to score.”

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After missing almost the entire season with a back condition, Aidan Miller is off to a hot start in the Arizona Fall League. The 22-year-old infield prospect joined Phillies Extra, The Inquirer’s baseball podcast, to discuss his recovery and why he believes the injury is behind him. Watch here.

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