The Phillies after 25 games: April pressure, the bullpen question, and a Brandon Marsh reset

With 10 losses in their last 16 games following a 7-2 start, it might make sense if the Phillies are feeling tight. So how do they snap out of it?

Phillies outfielder Brandon Marsh (left), manager Rob Thomson, and pitcher Ranger Suárez are at different points through 25 games.Read moreInquirer Staff Photographers

by Scott Lauber

Published April 24, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ET

NEW YORK — Rob Thomson sat behind a desk in the visiting manager’s office here Wednesday and noted the discourse about the Phillies.

“I feel like everyone around us,” he said, “is panicking.”

In that case, what happened a few hours later didn’t help. With two out in the 10th inning, embattled reliever Jordan Romano gave up a broken-bat bloop into center field, Pete Alonso dove across home plate, and the Phillies lost, 4-3, to the Mets, the final insult in a three-game sweep by the very same team that vanquished them in the playoffs last October.

If Thomson thought the masses were panicked before …

But here’s the question, and it’s relevant even after only 25 games: What’s the mood within the clubhouse after four consecutive losses and 10 in the last 16 games?

Because everyone knows the stakes. After backsliding in each of the last three postseasons — with free agency looming for a few key players (Kyle Schwarber and J.T. Realmuto, in particular) — a Phillies core that’s been intact since 2022 is going to change next year.

So, if the Phillies — 13-12 on a day off before facing the Cubs in Chicago after a 7-2 start — are feeling or playing unusually tight amid a four-game skid in April, well, it would make some sense.

“We’re fine,” Thomson said. “Same guys. Experienced group. We’ve been through this before.”

OK, but the Phillies were held to three — count ‘em, three! — extra-base hits in the three games against the Mets. In a related story, Nick Castellanos got thrown out trying to score the go-ahead run from second base on a two-out single to right field in the eighth inning.

It was a continuation of an early-season trend. The Phillies are tied for third in the majors with a .340 on-base percentage, partially because they’re tied for second in walks (108). But they rank only 11th in runs per game (4.44) because they’re batting only .251 with a .781 OPS with runners in scoring position.

“We have not been getting a lot of clutch hits,” president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said. “We just haven’t been. And we haven’t been driving [balls] into the gap too often with guys on base. We just really have not hit very well with runners in scoring position. You constantly talk about it. I know they talk about approach. We haven’t chased as much, but it’s also one where we just haven’t gotten a big hit.”

And Bryce Harper did observe last week that several players, notably Alec Bohm and Brandon Marsh, appeared to be carrying an inordinate amount of stress brought on by early-season slumps.

So, about the Phillies feeling pressure in April?

“I’d rather you guys say it’s a little early,” Harper said. “I don’t like that, just because we should be wanting to play good baseball all year long — from April all the way to November. Obviously, that’s not going to happen. You’re going to go through ups and downs and you try to stay as even keel as you can. But we’re a good team in here, and we expect to win.

“We’ve just got to win. That takes care of everything, right? It takes care of mindset. It takes care of what you’re feeling or anything else like that. It doesn’t matter if one guy’s struggling. We come to win, and winning takes care of it all.

“As a team, we have to be better. That’s a really good Mets team over there, but it doesn’t matter. As a team, I think we’ve got to really understand what we want to do, how we want to do it, where we want to go as a club. We’ve got to play better baseball.”

A few other takeaways through 25 games:

Ranger won’t bring relief

Before becoming a mainstay in the Phillies’ rotation, Ranger Suárez dominated in the bullpen, posting a 1.12 ERA in 27 relief appearances in 2021.

Would the Phillies consider putting Suárez in the struggling bullpen upon his return from the injured list?

“We have not talked about that,” Dombrowski said.

But the Phillies’ bullpen has a 5.56 ERA, second-worst in the majors. The Phillies also lack depth in the upper minors. So they moved triple-A righty Seth Johnson from the rotation to the bullpen.

Johnson, a hard-throwing 26-year-old, has a fastball-slider combination that the organization believes could translate in a reliever role if he improves his command.

Suárez, who went down with a sore lower back in spring training, is scheduled to make another start Sunday in triple A. After that, he could reenter the rotation, even though Taijuan Walker has pitched well in his place.

In that scenario, Walker would go to the bullpen, as long as lefty Cristopher Sánchez doesn’t miss time after leaving a start Tuesday night with forearm soreness.

Meanwhile, Romano has better maintained his velocity. He touched 97.7 mph in the 10th inning Wednesday. He also made a few mechanical adjustments that left him encouraged.

But the results haven’t lined up. He lamented not putting away Alonso with a two-strike slider that wasn’t far enough off the plate and got hit for a double.

“It’s extremely difficult,” Romano said. “But that’s the tough thing about baseball. You’ve got to kind of grind through it. Right now, I feel like the stuff’s good, everything’s good, and the results are not there. It’s extremely tough, for sure.”

Front and center

Marsh accompanied the Phillies to New York but not to Chicago. Instead, he rerouted to Allentown to play a few triple-A games this weekend.

Not to be overdramatic, but it feels like an inflection point.

Because the Phillies finally committed to Marsh as the everyday center fielder, and he’s hitless in 31 at-bats, part of a 4-for-42 start. He tweaked his right hamstring last week and went on the 10-day injured list.

Marsh is eligible to be reinstated beginning Sunday. But the Phillies view this weekend as a chance for him to “reset” his season after the poor start.

Otherwise, Marsh figures to lose playing time, especially with Johan Rojas off to a 13-for-41 (.317) start. And that isn’t what the Phillies envisioned when they acquired Marsh at the 2022 trade deadline for catcher Logan O’Hoppe.

“We like Brandon Marsh a lot, but competition is what makes the world go round,” Dombrowski said. “Rojas is out there playing. I know Marsh is better than this. But he’s got to go and do it. It does give him a chance to reset. We hope that he gets a reset because we know he’s a good hitter.”