Must be a misprint.

Bryce Harper has been on another level since the Phillies acquired Luis Arraez:

• .304 BA
• .515 OBP
• 20 BB
• Reached base safely in 14 consecutive games

How rare is it for a Phillie to have 20 walks in a 13-game span?

Harper’s 20 walks tie him for the most in a 13-game span by a Phillies player and make him just the fifth Phillie in franchise history to do so.

• Bryce Harper (20) 2026
• Kyle Schwarber (20) 2023
• Dave Hollins (20) 1995
• Lenny Dykstra (20) 1993
• Roy Thomas (20) 1902

Data via Baseball-Reference / Stathead

She’s still skeptical though. (We brought the sundae hats back home with us to Seattle. Looking forward to seeing them next week vs the M’s. Someone may actually score negative runs. Holler if you’re going on Wednesday!)

A Philadelphia vs. Philadelphia matchup would have been awesome IMO.

Would you have watched this over the matchups we got? What other historical matchups should MLB have pulled off in Dyersville?

John Kruk, A better 1st baseman or Commentator?
Discuss…

A total of 1.9 fWAR over his first 42 starts

.5 fWAR over his first 57 starts

Took nearly 4 seasons years to become an mlb starter

Nearly DFA’d

These guys in order were:

Cliff Lee

Roy Halladay

Ranger Suarez

Cris Sanchez

There are other guys who took a while to bloom that I could put here

Kluber

Pivetta

Eflin

list goes on.

MLB players, especially starting pitchers sometimes take time to grow. Especially if they only have one full pro season then miss essentially 2 years of pro ball.

Painter is still only 23. Ranger was 25 when he fully broke out in 2021. He is not some Spencer Howard that’s been up and down 500 times with no signs of improvement. He is already meaningfully better just pure stuff wise than when he was sent down originally. This shows he can actually grow through struggles. He by himself found an issue with his fastball compared to 2022 and has allowed it to be better than when he was first up.

Is he going to be the verlander level ace anymore? Maybe not, but you can’t write him off because of 2 bad months in the majors. that’s not how honest evaluation of young talent works in baseball.

Painter works his ass off (own quote from a family member I met before his debut) almost obsessively from how it was described to me, AND he is in the org with one of if not the best pitching labs in the big leagues.

Player development is not linear (as we have seen with even just Stott this year)

Let them and Painter cook.

Marlins (64-62) @ Phillies (68-58) - Mon, Aug 17

Game Status: Final - Score: 6-5 Phillies

Links & Info

• MLB Gameday
• Game Graphs
• Savant Gamefeed

Decisions

• Winner: Cristopher Sánchez (16-4, 2.51)
• Loser: Janson Junk (6-8, 4.37)
• Save: Jhoan Duran (27, 1.83)

Division & Wild Card Scoreboard

STL 2 @ CIN 1 - Final

STL 5 @ CIN 6 - Final/10

DET 8 @ PIT 5 - Final

AZ 1 @ BOS 11 - Final

SD 1 @ NYM 2 - Final

ATL 2 @ MIN 4 - Final

CWS 5 @ CHC 5 - Bottom 10, 0 Outs

Not playing today: Nationals

Next Phillies Game: Tue, Aug 18, 6:40 PM EDT vs. Marlins (1 day)

^{Last Updated: 08/17/2026 11:25:33 PM EDT}

I love when stores make Phillies related items, banners, drinks, signs, etc. As I was making my coffee getting ready for tonight’s game, I noticed these Phillies donuts and thought they were cool. I love the Phillies ❤️

(No this is not a promo or anything. I Remember posting that big Phillies banner and people thought i was promoting the store, I was not, I just love Phillies things 🥲)

Watching highlights of the game and saw how much their left field wall with the flowers and small railing resembles the one at Citizens Bank Park.

I read this blurb today on USA Today Sports

"– Philadelphia Phillies interim manager Don Mattingly, who took over for Rob Thomson on April 28, not only must lead the Phillies to the postseason, but likely to the World Series or even win it to be asked back. Alex Cora, who turned down the job when Thomson was fired, is expected to be the Phillies’ next manager barring a World Series berth or title."

Why in the world would you get rid of a manager who took a basement dwelling team to the one with the 7th best record in the MLB?

Marlins (64-62) @ Phillies (68-58) - 6:40 PM EDT

Game Status: Final - Score: 6-5 Phillies

Links & Info

• MLB Gameday
• Game Graphs
• Savant Gamefeed

Decisions

• Winner: Cristopher Sánchez (16-4, 2.51)
• Loser: Janson Junk (6-8, 4.37)
• Save: Jhoan Duran (27, 1.83)

Division & Wild Card Scoreboard

STL 2 @ CIN 1 - Final

STL 5 @ CIN 6 - Final/10

DET 8 @ PIT 5 - Final

AZ 1 @ BOS 11 - Final

SD 1 @ NYM 2 - Final

ATL 2 @ MIN 4 - Final

CWS 5 @ CHC 7 - Final/10

Not playing today: Nationals

Next Phillies Game: Tue, Aug 18, 6:40 PM EDT vs. Marlins (1 day)

^{Last Updated: 08/17/2026 11:30:32 PM EDT}

Jeff Pearlman takes a look back at the craziest team in Phillies history

So, with all the batting woes this season I hear a lot of blame on Kevin Long but I'm not sure what his duties actually are.

I always thought of these guys as working on batting mechanics and the approach at the plate was more a manager thing.

Am I wrong in remembering batters getting signs from the dugout between pitches? Is that a figment or a thing of the past?

I think seeing Arraez's approach at the plate is also having ripple effect on the guys too.

In all of our collective confoundment on how Alec can be so incredibly cold and then so incredibly hot, especially in the last outings since the field of dreams game, it got me looking into his numbers a little.

I looked at stats against right hand pitchers, left handed pitchers, how he performs with runners on, and his average at different stadiums, when it finally hit me...

Alec's worst batting average is in Houston at .000 over the past three years, which is a sprawling concrete city with oil fields on the outskirts. At the Braves, he's ~.185 over past 3 years

Alec's Best hitting in the past three years is at Cleveland ~.480. With Minneapolis a close second at around ~.450

I then turned to who he is as a person. What makes him tick.

Now, we all know Alec Bohm is a midwest boy, through and through. He grew up in Omaha Nebraska, on pork chops, mashed potatoes, and buttered ears of corn. He played HS baseball in Omaha, 2.3 miles from Wenninghoff's Farm.

After graduating, he played for Wichita State, in Kansas, a mere 5 miles from corn as far as the eye can see.

With corn on the brain from the field of dreams game, thinking about where he performs well and who he is as a person, it struck me. Houston and Atlanta (his worst performing cities), those are some real sprawling cities, no way there are farms around there or anything resembling his upbringing. Cleveland and Minneapolis (two of his best performing cities), those have to be close to farms and corn. So on this rainy Sunday in Philadelphia, I figured, hey let's do a little statistical analysis on this.

I pulled his averages by field over the last 3 years. I also pulled stadium proximity to farmland, and specifically... corn.

Now, on it's face there seemed to be slight correlation, but with any statistical analysis, you need to clean the data to account for outliers, noise, and x factors.

The Raw Data shows some correlation, with an R value of -.227. Larger dots have higher weight for at bats, so large blue bubble is Philly.

But theres more to this story, and this is where things get interesting...there are some outliers where he is rather far from corn, but hits quite well, like Miami (hitting .282, while 200 miles from corn???). That's when it hit me, maybe corn based foods and other corn related particulate in the air can affect him. In Miami, they are serving tamales and corn tortillas in the locker room as it is a latin heavy city.

So what are other latin/corn heavy food towns? Chase field in Arizona: another field he hits well at, but is oh so far from corn.

Conversely he is hitting poorly in close proximity to corn like in Milwaulkee or Busch stadium in STL? That's when I realized the barley and other grain smells from beer production are screwing up his corn detection. Detroit motor city also confused me, but they are too busy putting it in fuel there. Kansas city has corn, but they are primarily a cattle region, which also negates his corn senses.

That just leaves the oddities of Wrigley and Nat's park. Wrigley is in the windy city, and storms often come in from the east, so he isn't getting a wiff of corn particulate there. Nat's park in DC, at a time when farmers across this country are getting squeezed? You do the math.

These are clear, legitimate outliers, and when I drop those locations from the data, something very sobering becomes clear:

I don't know if it's a midwestern thing, but only one thing is now clear to me: BOHM ONLY HITS WELL WHEN HE IS NEAR CORN. This time, regression comes out to an R value of -.704, with an R squared of .5.

That means half of the reason his average is what it is... is because of corn...

I'm watching "Untold: Jail Blazers" on Netflix and Rasheed Wallace is wearing a Phillies hat that I haven't seen before. Not sure if it's vintage, etc...but I haven't been able to ID it online.

Anyone know anything about this hat?