The Phillies are making a change on the coaching staff, and two familiar names are on the way out.
According to Jim Salisbury of NBC Sports Philadelphia, the club will not retain hitting coach Kevin Long or infield coach Bobby Dickerson.
Long had been in Philadelphia since heading into the 2022 season, when the Phillies hired him as their hitting coach. Before that, he held the same job with the Yankees, Mets and Nationals.
His first year in Washington came in 2018, which was also Bryce Harper’s final season there before free agency sent him to Philadelphia. At that point, the Phillies were still in the middle of a long rebuild, having missed the playoffs every year from 2012 through 2021.
In that 2021 season, the team hit .240/.318/.408 as a group, good for a 94 wRC+.
The change comes after a stretch that started strongly under Long. In 2022, Philadelphia posted a .253/.317/.422 line and a 107 wRC+, then went on a run to the World Series before falling to the Astros. Long was rewarded after that season with an extension of unknown length.
The offense remained steady for the next three years. From 2023 through 2025, the Phillies combined for a .257/.327/.431 slash line and a 106 wRC+. That stretch included three straight playoff appearances, with losses in the NLCS in 2023 and the NLDS in each of the next two seasons.
But 2026 turned into a different story. The Phillies batted .240/.312/.395 as a team, producing a 92 wRC+ that ranked ahead of only the Reds and Rockies.
Among the 11 players with at least 130 plate appearances, only Harper, Kyle Schwarber and Bryson Stott finished with a wRC+ above 90. Core names such as Trea Turner and J.T.
Realmuto had down years, while Luis Arraez’s production dipped after he was acquired from the Giants at the deadline.
Dickerson’s exit closes another long run on the staff. He has spent more than a decade coaching in the majors, working with the Orioles, Padres and Phillies since 2011 in roles that included bullpen coach, third base coach, bench coach and infield coach. Philadelphia hired him as its infield coach in October of 2021.
The Phillies’ defensive issues have been a recurring problem for years, though the roster construction has pointed more toward offense than run prevention. The club has leaned into bat-first players such as Schwarber and Nick Castellanos, and it has kept giving Bohm extended run at third base despite his rough numbers there. At the deadline, Philadelphia reshuffled its alignment to move Arraez to second, Stott to third, Bohm to first and Harper to right field.
The numbers this season were ugly enough. The Phillies finished at minus-51 in Defensive Runs Saved, tied with the Athletics for last in baseball.
Outs Above Average had them at minus-21, placing them in the bottom third of MLB. Bohm and Turner were rated poorly by both measures.
Stott fared well in OAA but not DRS, while Harper’s work at first base was viewed as neutral by DRS and below average by OAA.
The staff changes come as Don Mattingly’s interim tag was removed earlier today, with the Phillies signing him to a two-year deal to manage the club in 2027 and 2028. Mattingly took over in April after Rob Thomson was fired, and he may have brought his own ideas about how to reshape a coaching staff he inherited in the middle of the season.
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