Phillies shortstop Trea Turner shows his frustration after making the final out of Monday night’s game in the NLDS. (Photo by Emilee Chinn/Getty Images)
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One more loss and it’s over. Not just the NLDS but this era of Phillies baseball.
One more loss and it’s time for a reboot, and that means we should say bye-bye to Kyle Schwarber and Ranger Suarez and maybe even J.T. Realmuto, all of whom will be free agents in a few weeks. One more loss and it may be time to find any takers for Nick Castellanos and Alec Bohm. And one more loss and maybe it’s time to drop the proverbial axe onto Phillies manager Rob Thomson.
Yes, all this is painful for Phillies fans to contemplate, considering how beloved the current team is and how it brought winning baseball back to Philadelphia after a decade of dreariness. But it seems clear the formula is busted. For the past four years, the Phils win in the regular season but, come the postseason, the bats turn to ice and the bullpen crumbles.
And more and more, their demise feels fated — especially at Citizens Bank Park, which Thomson once described as “four hours of hell” for opponents, but now feels hellish for the Phils, who are 1-5 in their last six home playoff games. Their 4-3 loss to the Dodgers on Monday has brought the Phils to edge of elimination.
And so who does Castellanos blame for the Phillies’ postseason disasters? The fans — no joke, he said the fans have created an atmosphere that’s causing a problem for the team.
“I think the stadium is alive on both sides, right?” Castellanos said, “When the game is going good, it’s wind at our back, but when the game is not going good, it’s wind in our face. The environment can be with us, and the environment can be against us.”
No surprise here, Casty’s comment triggered Phillies fans and media alike; however, maybe he’s the voice of truth. Maybe he’s admitting to a hard-to-swallow pill that the current team can’t handle Philly fans and all their Philly-ness — their edge, their volume, their boos. And if that’s the case, management needs to find players who can thrive in the powder-keg that is Red October.
This feels like blasphemy even to point out but maybe Schwarber epitomizes the problem that Castellanos brought up. During the regular season, Schwarber looked indispensable, belting 56 home runs while massive home crowds rained down M-V-P chants each time he stepped to home plate.
But in the postseason, Schwarbombs die at the warning track. The lefty dinger-machine is hitting .115 with no home runs and one RBI over his last eight playoff games dating back to game 6 of the 2023 NLCS. It makes you wonder that a mega-deal (which Schwarber will get this winter) may not be worth it if he consistently vanishes in October.
The Phillies are clinging onto a wisp of hope, trailing the Dodgers 0-2 in the best-of-three NLDS. They’ll play game 3 in Los Angeles, and if they win, they’ll get game four in L.A. on Thursday.
And if they whip up a mini-miracle and bring the series back to Philadelphia for a deciding game 5, it would be chance for the Phillies to prove that they can win in Philly, and it would also be one last chance for the Phillies to prove that the team doesn’t need a reboot.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonystitt/2025/10/07/nick-castellanos-blamed-phillies-fans-but-maybe-hes-right/
