The Brewers didn’t just roll through October. They put on a clinic in how a lineup can win without living and dying by the long ball, and that lesson landed hard for anyone watching the Phillies stumble out of another season.
After Milwaukee swept the Dodgers in the NLCS, it was easy to see why they looked like a club on the verge of something bigger. Then they went on to dominate again, and for Phillies fans, that only sharpened the frustration around a team that keeps ending its year the same way. If the Phillies had run into that Brewers group in this postseason, it could have been a bloodbath.
That’s what makes the Phillies’ offensive issues so hard to ignore. The starting rotation remains one of the team’s biggest strengths and usually keeps them in games, so the pitching staff is not where the real criticism belongs.
The lineup is another story, and it has been for years. Calls to move on from Kevin Long were ignored for multiple seasons before the Phillies finally hired Peter Fatse, and even then, the bigger problem was never just one coach.
With Long, the issue was not really about a wholesale change in approach. The core hitters kept doing what got them to The Show.
Outside of Bizzaro World Bryce Harper in August 2026, it often looked like the hitting coach wasn’t doing much at all. Maybe there was more happening behind the scenes, but from the outside, the results never matched the talent.
That’s usually why the coach is the first one out the door when a team needs a reset.
One moment in particular summed up how messy things had become: the Phillies didn’t have a lefty to hit batting practice off of during games until a month into the season. Whether Long realized late that the team needed one or the front office simply dragged its feet, it was an embarrassing detail for an organization that should have had that handled long before the season started.
The deeper issue is the way this lineup has operated for years. Too often, it has looked like hitters are trying to guess what’s coming instead of reacting to the pitch that’s actually there.
Major League pitching is brutal, no question. Pitchers are throwing “alien stuff” as one Twitter user said to me earlier this season.
But good hitters still adjust, and the Phillies just haven’t done that consistently.
There was a stretch in August when it felt like maybe that was changing, and that the 2026 Phillies could finally break through. Instead, their Wild Card series loss to the Braves brought the same flaws right back into focus.
The Braves then barely gave the Dodgers a sweat in the NLDS, and the Dodgers were then dominated by the Brewers in the NLCS. The contrast only made Milwaukee’s approach stand out more.
When the Brewers hit, they look like they’re playing a different sport. They put the ball where it’s thrown.
They don’t keep swinging at pitches that are tailing well out of the zone. They don’t fall apart with two strikes.
And they’re not married to the idea that every good at-bat has to end with a home run.
That part matters for the Phillies. Schwarber and Harper give the lineup its juice, and nobody is pretending home runs aren’t valuable.
But the rest of the order has too often chased the same power high without being able to sustain it. A couple of hot games here and there never turn into a real identity.
Then the burden falls back on Schwarber and Harper, and when they hit slumps, the whole offense sinks with them. Even those two are always chasing that home run high, too, and that doesn’t help.
That’s the kind of lineup the Phillies have built, and neither Schwarber nor Harper is suddenly going to become a contact hitter. The question now is whether Dave Dombrowski and John Middleton really looked at this group in 2024 and believed it was good enough to run back for two more seasons.
With the lockout looming, the offense could look different in 2027. It still might not be pretty in the regular season, but the bigger need is clear: hitters who aren’t rattled by the bright lights and who swing at the ball where it’s thrown. Fatse may or may not be able to fix that himself, but the Phillies have already taken the first step by changing course.
If the lineup still doesn’t change, bigger moves could follow. A sell-off of the high-priced players is at least possible. However it plays out, the Phillies feel one step closer to the end of an era that could end up being one of the most disappointing in franchise history, and that’s not something many would have expected to say a couple years ago.
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For the Yankees, the wrinkle is obvious: Harpers idea also has Luis Arraez headed to New York, which could complicate the clubs own infield planning if the Phillies do, in fact, pursue Chisholm. It is all speculative at this point, but it is the sort of offseason overlap that can make one teams wish list become another teams problem, especially when multiple contenders are eyeing the same talent pool. [Read more 🡒]