MINNEAPOLIS — At the end of July, two-thirds of the way through the season, the Phillies had the lowest on-base percentage of any team in the majors.
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So, they staged an intervention.
Kind of.
“We were swinging ourselves out of innings, out of at-bats, and the numbers say there’s not a lot of strikes coming to a lot of us,” first baseman Alec Bohm said. “It was, let’s at least be looking for something, and if we’re going to go down, let’s go down with a plan and not just be up there free-swinging.
“That kind of landed with everybody, and I think we’re definitely responding in a good way.”
In fact, guess which team leads the majors in on-base percentage in August.
The Phillies took a .361 mark into Saturday night, and that was before Trea Turner, Bryce Harper, and Luis Arraez worked consecutive walks ahead of big hits from Bohm, Edmundo Sosa, and Bryson Stott’s three-run homer in a seven-run fifth inning to break open a 9-1 laugher over the Twins.
It would’ve been a full-blown knee-slapper if Turner hadn’t exited in the eighth inning after fouling a pitch off his right knee. Even so, he emerged with only a bruise and was walking without issue in the clubhouse after the game.
“I think it looked a lot worse than it was,” said Turner, who didn’t require imaging. “Definitely a little sore, but it kind of just hit me in the knee and I couldn’t catch myself, so I kind of landed awkwardly. But I’m all good.”
Jesús Luzardo has been as good as any pitcher for three months. He yielded one run and worked into the seventh inning for the fifth start in a row. In 17 starts since May 11, he’s second among all pitchers in ERA (2.19) and innings (106⅔) and third in strikeouts (128).
Luzardo got help from Arraez’s one-hop relay throw — and a well-used replay challenge — to cut down Luke Keaschall at the plate to maintain a 1-0 lead in the fourth inning before the fifth-inning onslaught.
“It’s an easy challenge,” interim manager Don Mattingly said of getting the call on the field overturned. “It’s a run, so you’re going to look at it. But that was kind of a momentum-turner.”
Only because the offense delivered against Twins lefty starter Connor Prielipp, who walked Turner and Harper on nine pitches to load the bases with two out. Arraez walked to force in a run before Bohm’s single, a two-run single from Sosa, and Stott’s homer made it 8-0.
Bohm finished with five hits, a career-high. Harper, who has drawn 20 walks in 14 games this month, reached base three times.
It was a continuation of Thursday night in a cornfield in Iowa, where the Phillies routed the Twins at the Field of Dreams movie site. The bats remain inconsistent (they scored a total of one run in back-to-back games this week in St. Louis), but there’s greater adherence to a plan at the plate.
The Phillies lead all teams with 75 walks in August. But it isn’t simply more patience at the plate, according to Mattingly. It’s a better approach within at-bats.
Hitting coach Kevin Long preaches “selective-aggressiveness,” a combination of not chasing pitches out of the strike zone and working the count but also pouncing when there’s a pitch to handle. Long and his assistants talked about being more faithful to that philosophy when they met with the hitters a few weeks ago.
“The hitters group had conversations with the guys just about staying within an approach,” Mattingly said. “Since then, the at-bats have really changed as far as staying within game plans, up and down the order. And we didn’t really talk about walking. We talked about staying within an approach. You still want to be aggressive in the strike zone, but knowing what you want to do.”
Jim Leyland, who managed the Tigers under Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski, always said the pennant races begin on Aug. 15.
In that case, the Phillies were right on time.
With a second consecutive victory over the Twins after back-to-back losses in St. Louis, the Phillies kept pace in what’s shaping up as a three-team — and perhaps even five-team — race for two wild-card spots. The Padres lost and the Diamondbacks won, leaving them both tied with the Phillies at 66-58, an 86-win pace.
After a relentless 30-day span in which they hosted the All-Star Game followed by the Dodgers and Yankees, traded for a three-time batting champion (Arraez), displaced three-fourths of the infield, and took a 10-hour detour to play at the Field of Dreams, the schedule features downhill sledding from here.
“It’s time to start going,” Stott said.
A more effective approach at the plate is one way to do that.
Tony Gwynn Jr. is a former major league outfielder and son of late Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn. Over the last two years, he got to know new Phillies second baseman Luis Arraez, whose contact skills at the plate often draw comparisons to Gwynn. Tony Jr. joined Phillies Extra to discuss his father, Arraez, and the bonds that connect them. Watch here.
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