Phillies Mailbag: Turner’s Struggles, N.L. East, Bullpen Use

We are back once again with the 97.3 ESPN Phillies Mailbag.  Each week we take your questions and answer them on The Sports Bash with Mike Gill.  Tune in each Tuesday afternoon to hear your questions answered on the air.

How much say does  Trea Turner have in where he plays?  It is time to do what is best for team.
~Michael

Phillies shortstop Trea Turner is struggling.  He is struggling at the plate.  He is struggling in the field.  Things seemed to hit a new low in the field during last night's 3-0 win against the San Diego Padres.

Here are the numbers.

Offensively: the 2025 National League batting champion is batting just .221, with a .608 OPS.  A .277 on base percentage is not good enough for a leadoff hitter in major league baseball.

Defensively: Turner is in the bottom five in Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) in all of baseball.  At -3 defensive runs saved, the only ones worse in baseball are C.J. Abrams of the Washington Nationals, Xander Boagerts of the San Diego Padres, Brooks Lee of the Minnesota Twins, and J.P. Crawford of the Seattle Mariners.

Turner now has six errors; last season he had eight the whole season.

It makes me think that he's bringing his struggles at the plate into the field.

The Phillies are committed to Turner for another seven years after this one at big money.  Aidan Miller is not going to help them at shortstop anytime soon.  So the circumstances suggest that Turner is going to have to get this right.

I would give Edmundo Sosa a couple of days starting at shortstop to give Turner a break much like the one that Alec Bohm recently had.

Turner did win the batting title last year.  And provided better defense just last year.  I think he has to be better than this.  It's just a matter of getting him there.

Should Phillies fans just accept that Atlanta will win the NL East? Or is the mentality that there is plenty of baseball left for the Phillies to catch up?
~Ed

When the Phillies bottomed out at 9-19 and manager Rob Thomson was fired, the Phillies were 10.5 games behind the Atlanta Braves.  Today?  Even after an extended hot streak under interim manager Don Mattingly, the Phillies are now 9.0 games behind the Braves.

So if that's what it took to gain 1.5 games, then the Phillies are probably going to have a hard time catching up to the Braves.  It can surely be done, but the teams do not play head-to-head until seven games in September after six early games.

If I am the Phillies, I would just focus on winning games.  83 games took a Wild Card in 2025 in the National League and 87 took one in the American League.  The Phillies have a shot of a Wild Card, for sure.

A good trade deadline will increase their ability to win.

But the focus should be on their own play.  The end results will work themselves out, but they have some heavier lifting the rest of the way to get there.

Kerkering came in for the 7th inning. He threw 15 pitches, 10 were strikes, and had 2 Ks.  So he was throwing good stuff.  Why not let him pitch the 8th? 
~Mark

First, Orion Kerkering has been one of the most trusted Phillies relievers in 2026.  After the way 2025 ended, it has not seemed to affect him in any way in 2026.  He currently holds a 2-0 record and a 2.33 ERA.  Not bad.

I think the answer to this is nothing specific about Kerkering but how relief pitchers are used and bullpens constructed in this day and age.  Kerkering has mostly existed as a high-leverage, back-end arm.

Those arms tend to have high velocity, swoop in, get an innings' worth of outs, and exit.

So Kerkering's longest appearance in his career was 1 2/3 innings.  And he did that exactly once.

One reason is the "up and down" that relievers would face.  They pitch an inning, and pitch it well,  But then they would have to sit while their team bats.  The adrenaline dies down.  And the second inning never seems to be as easy as the first.

They have used him to get a final out in one inning and then pitch another.  Or, come back to pitch to one batter in the next inning.  But that is usually it for a player that fits that description.

In the Phillies bullpen that's likely Jose Alvarado, Brad Keller, and Jhoan Duran as well.

But a multi-inning reliever?  They are scarce in this day and age.  In fact, it's hard to confidently say that they have one of those on the roster, though they might trust Tim Mayza or Tanner Banks with that during a "bullpen game" situation where the bullpen has to get all the outs.