Philadelphia Phillies Fire Two Coaches After Another Disappointing Season

By Jordan Long

The Philadelphia Phillies ended the season at 82-80.  They missed the postseason for the 10th year in a row.  They finished 6.5 games back of the Atlanta Braves for the National League East Division.  The St. Louis Cardinals took the 2nd Wild Card spot.  Philadelphia was 8 games behind them.  Since Philadelphia wasn’t able to earn a playoff spot, changes were coming.  They decided to let go of hitting coach Joe Dillon and infield coach Juan Castro due to the poor season.

                Philadelphia was 18th in MLB with a .240 batting average.  At home, they hit .244, 16th in baseball.  When they went on the road, they were worse at .236, 20th in MLB.  Philadelphia smacked  198 home runs, 15th in all of baseball.

The offense was just average.  The Phillies couldn’t have the base hit to score runs when a runner was in scoring position to either tie or take the lead.  They often would be out, ending the threat.  It was part of their struggles this year.

                Philadelphia also decided that Castro didn’t do his job at getting the infielders ready to go.  As a team, Philadelphia ended up with 93 errors, tied with the New York Mets with the 6th most this season. The infielders and pitchers totaled 82 of the 93 errors.  Castro wasn’t helping them improve the errors.  Those errors could be costly since they allowed a runner to move into scoring position or have a runner score.  Philadelphia’s fielding percentage was .984, 23rd in baseball.

                According to inquirer.com, Manager Joe Girardi said,  “I think they worked extremely hard, but we just felt at this time it was time to make some changes. We always talk about, at this level, it’s a production-based business. It’s difficult.”

                Philadelphia is now going into the offseason looking to hire a hitting and a fielding coach.  Whoever it is, hopefully, they will do a much better job in 2022.  The defense and the offense let them down.  They would like to end their postseason drought.  The last time Philadelphia earned a playoff spot, 2011, they lost in the Division Series to the St. Louis Cardinals.