The Phillies need a breath of fresh air in their lineup. Dave Dombrowski should start looking within.

There are people who will tell you that there’s no such thing as a bad winning streak or a good losing streak. I am not one of those people. This time of year, the worst thing that can happen to a baseball team is a crippling case of self-delusion. The greatest gift of all is to know thyself.

Well, the Phillies know now.

A week ago, they were in a psychological danger zone. Winners of 11 of 12. Best record in the National League. Even the most hardened of local columnists were starting to wonder if they weren’t a fundamentally flawed team after all.

Maybe Dave Dombrowski didn’t need the reminder. Maybe he understood that the Phillies were going to have to beat somebody other than the Marlins, Rockies, Pirates, or Athletics. And maybe he knew that, when the time came, the Phillies were going to need to subsist on something other than Schwarbombs and immaculate starting pitching.

If he didn’t, he does now. That’s a good thing.

I guess we can quibble with the particulars. It would have been nice if Jesús Luzardo had held the Blue Jays to a couple of field goals instead of eight runs on nine hits. It would have been even nicer if we could count Thursday’s 9-1 loss to the Blue Jays as his mulligan, instead of a 33% improvement over his previous start. Then again, maybe epiphanies need to be dramatic.

Anybody who says they aren’t concerned about Luzardo isn’t fully appreciating how rare it is for a pitcher to allow a combined 20 runs in back-to-back starts. Only six players in the expansion had done it before Luzardo. None of them had anything remotely close to a 2.25 ERA in the 11 starts leading up to their meltdowns. A 37-year-old Greg Maddux allowed 19 runs in back-to-back starts early in the 2003 season and posted a 3.45 ERA the rest of the way. So, there’s that.

The real problem is that Luzardo’s struggles rank pretty far down on the list of reasons to worry about this Phillies team. Either he is healthy or he isn’t and Rob Thomson seems to think that he is. After the Phillies’ loss to the Blue Jays, the manager pointed to Toronto’s aggression early in the count against Luzardo’s first-pitch strikes.

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“I think it really just comes down to execution,” Thomson said.

There’s plenty of reason to think that Luzardo will bounce back. The same can’t be said of the lineup. That’s where Phillies fans should focus their angst, and where Dombrowski should focus his efforts.

The problem with the Phillies is that they’ve needed guys like Luzardo, Zack Wheeler, Ranger Suárez, and Cristopher Sánchez to pitch like aces. Anything less than that leaves them open to a loss. When a rookie like Mick Abel comes up for a spot start, anything he gives you should be a luxury. Instead, the Phillies needed every bit of the 11 scoreless innings he logged over two starts before allowing a run in the sixth inning on Wednesday. Abel has allowed one run in 11⅓ innings and the Phillies are 1-1 with a 1-0 win and a 2-1 loss.

It has been the story all season.

Of the Phillies’ 34 wins heading into Thursday, only 14 had come in games in which they allowed more than three runs. They are 19-22 when an opponent scores more than two runs. Sure, they are 18-2 when holding an opponent to two or fewer runs. But look at some of those wins: 1-0, 2-0, 2-0, 2-1, 3-0, 3-1, 3-1, 3-2, 3-2.

In other words, if the Phillies pitching staff had allowed three runs in even half those games, they could easily be six games behind the Mets in the division.

The moral of the story? The Phillies didn’t have much room for regression on the pitching side of things.

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There comes a point in every relationship when you can no longer justify sitting around waiting for someone to become what you think they should be. June is well past that point for the Phillies lineup. We’ve been watching this version of them since June 2023.

They are who they are. For the most part, they’ve been who they’ve been. Kyle Schwarber has 19 home runs and an MVP case. Bryce Harper has a .998 OPS over his last 18 games. Trea Turner’s number are better than they were last season and right in line with what you might reasonably expect. Everyone else has bounced between an average hitter and slightly below. The track records suggest that is who they are.

The trade deadline is a crutch this time of year. A coping mechanism. There is no solution, let alone one that’s worth the cost.

Dombrowski’s only choice is to get creative. To acknowledge that the Phillies’ lineup is missing something, the same thing it missed in the 2023 NLCS and the 2024 NLDS.

Otto Kemp, a 25-year-old who has hit at every level, has a 1.025 OPS with 14 home runs at triple A. Justin Crawford is hitting .340 with 22 steals.

Maybe the time isn’t now. But it is getting close.