With Jesus Luzardo out, Phillies hitters need to start earning their millions

Bryce Harper, Trea Turner, Kyle Schwarber, J.T. Realmuto, Alec Bohm, and Louis Arraez will make a combined $111.2 million this season.

Now would be a good time for them to start earning it.

The Phillies entered Wednesday night’s game in Washington ranked fourth in MLB in payroll but ranked 15th in runs scored, 19th in batting average, and 21st (!) in OPS.

And this is a lineup that features the major-league home-run leader, Kyle Schwarber, and Louis Arreaz, who looks like a lock to win his fourth batting title in five years.

This is a crisis. They’re a half-game behind the Cubs for first place in the wild-card race and just 2 1/2 games ahead of the Diamondbacks who are the first team out of the three-team wild-card pool. Eleven games remain, the last nine against the surging Mets, the first-place Brewers, and the first-place Rays.

Sound the klaxon.

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The bullpen is in shambles. The starters are wearing down. The defense and baserunning — bad as ever.

Now, on Tuesday, All-Star lefty Jesus Luzardo landed on the injured list with shoulder soreness. He’s done until the day before the season ends, but it’s fair to assume he’s done until next March.

It’s easy to focus on the sudden struggles of lefty ace Christopher Sánchez and bullpen surprise Big Jon Bowlen, and to criticize the significant mistake made at the deadline of trading for lefty reliever Brooks Raley, the 38-year-old who spent five years in the Korean league.

But entering Wednesday the Phillies had lost eight of their last 12 games, and they had scored three runs or less seven times.

Your $111 million at work.

Phils president Dave Dombrowski constructed this team to hit its way past all of the expected deficiencies: defense, baserunning, speed, and bullpen.

The last four postseasons, those hitters failed. They didn’t fail to the same degree each playoff run, and they didn’t fail the entirety of each playoff run, and not every single guy failed, but the lineup underproduced to its pay grade, and that was the biggest difference between winning and losing.

Not pulling Zack Wheeler against Yordan Alvarez; not asking Bryson Stott to bunt Nick Castellanos from second to third base; not Craig Kimbrel imploding, and not Orion Kerkering glitching. It’s been the hitters every October, whether late against the Astros, in the middle of the playoffs against the Diamondbacks, or early against the Mets, then the Dodgers.

They can do this.

When they won 15 of 17 games from mid-August to Sept. 1 they scored four or more runs 14 times.

They were patient.

They took close strikes.

They walked like Egyptians.

Harper, hitting third, was in the middle of it all, hitting third in the order, so literally; and showing unprecedented discipline, so, figuratively as well. In a run that eclipsed both ends of that 17-game stretch Harper established her career-high by reaching base in 35 consecutive games. He walked 37 times.

His on-base percentage is .275 since.

That’s the issue with this team.

Schwarber will hit four home runs in five games, a run that ended a week ago, and then he’ll go 2-for-22 with seven strikeouts, as he did in the next five games.

No one will argue that Turner’s season from hell is the biggest issue in the lineup, and no one will argue that Realmuto’s astonishing decline makes Nike stock look like a good investment.

We will absolve Stott from this discussion, since he seems to have settled into a consistent offensive profile and since he’s been a defensive savior. We will absolve rookie center fielder Justin Crawford, too, as well as the outfield platoon.

And this is not a crisis of starting pitching.

There are reasons the Phillies are paying more than $381 million in salary and cap taxes this year, and one of the main reasons is quality depth.

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They entered the playoffs last year without Zack Wheeler, perhaps the second-best pitcher in franchise history. They lost that best-of-five series to the eventual champion Dodgers in four games, but that had nothing to do with the starting pitching. Sánchez, Luzardo, and an Aaron Nola/Ranger Suarez piggyback start combined to allow six earned runs in 25 innings. That’s a 2.16 ERA.

Luzardo might return. He’s eligible to come off the IL just before the postseason begins, but who knows?

And will it matter?

Luzardo, who signed a five-year, $135 million extension that nullified his free agency after this season, was an All-Star in July. He was 5-0 in his last seven starts, all Phillies wins, with a 1.08 ERA and two scoreless outings, including his first complete game, which was his last outing.

» READ MORE: Andrew Painter’s potential role on a Phillies playoff staff is uncertain. Painter says any role is OK with him.

Wheeler had been just as good as Luzardo, but, as was the case last season, when Wheeler was lost for the stretch run and the playoffs, there was plenty of depth behind him. Such is the case now, between Wheeler, Sánchez, a resurgent Aaron Nola, and suddenly competent rookie Andrew Painter.

All is not lost.

But the starters have to have help. Luzardo won the last game he pitched in, but he had to go nine innings and allow zero runs. Score of that game? 1-0

No team is going to have all of its highly paid offensive weapons producing at the same time. But if they hope to reach the playoffs, and if they hope to advance, the best starting pitching in history won’t help them if the bats don’t get hot and stay hot.

One hundred eleven million dollars worth of hot.

Starters are fading. The bullpen is trash. The defense and baserunning stink.

Time to cash in on the bats.

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The Phillies and Braves are set to square off again this weekend in Atlanta, so it's the perfect time to check in with Jeff Francoeur, who played for both teams and calls Braves games on TV and radio. Francoeur joined Phillies Extra to help break down the race for NL East supremacy. Watch here.

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