The Phillies have a MASSIVE Problem...

We've officially made it to the all-star break and are past the midway point of the MLB season and it is time to have an uncomfortable conversation about Bryson Stott. While we all hope that he will be A-OK in the long haul, there have been some notable struggles by the Philly second baseman that I think it is time to get into detail about. I want to highlight exactly what's going on with Bryson Stott, the clear issue that he continues to face at the plate, and if something in the bigger picture needs to be considered in regard to Stott as we build this What sparked this video today? This has been something that I sort of danced around for a little while now. This was a topic that I had on the background or didn't want to fully dive into, but the struggles have continued to get worse for Bryson Stott. To highlight what he has done on this season overall, we're talking about just six home runs, 38 RBIs, a .303 on-base percentage that has walked 31 times and just 73 hits across his 312 at-bats. Stott has been a guy who I think we were very ready to crown as this key foundational piece of the Philly's future. So many people talk about him like he is the next clear-cut Chase Utley, and for a brief minute, it looked like he was on that trajectory, but there has been some notable slippage here. Now to dive into his stats as a whole, I did want to look at the year-by-year breakdown, and you can see the clear breakout, and the slash lines are in particular what I'm looking at here with 2023 being his best season with the team. In 2023, he slashed .280 at the plate, .329 OBP, .419 slugging, and a .747 OPS there. That certainly is not elite by MLB standards, but you take that. I'd be completely satisfied if that is the production that Bryson Stott is giving us on a year-in and year-out basis. Also a 4.3 war, which is pretty impressive there. His defense speaks for itself, and I do want to get back to that in regard to the conversation, but then take a peek at how things have gone from season to season. The following year, last year, he hit slash lines of .245, .315, and .356 with a .671 OPS there, and then even more slippage this season. Looking at the numbers once again, .234 at the plate, .303 OBP, just a .333 slugging percentage, the worst of his career there, and is posting a .637 OPS. That is also the worst of his career. Now, for Stott in particular, I did want to pull up this article from The Good Fight, which did sort of spark my interest today to get into this here, and this lays out the case for does there need to be a solution to the Bryson Stott problem, and what it writes is, for right now, there hasn't been anything Stott has done of late that would suggest the current amount of time he's getting is justified. Since May 1st, he's hit .204, .264, and .284. That's an OPS under .560. Read that again, an OPS that is under .560. That's not just below major league average, that's a number worthy of demotion. To continue on with the article, it writes, he's got 76 OPS plus on the season. He's gotten steadily worse since 2023, a season in which he had a .103 OPS plus. We've reached the point where, even with his above average glove at second base, the team needs to start thinking about what kind of production is the lowest possible point they'll tolerate before ceding more and more playing time to someone else. Maybe that someone is Edmundo Sosa. We've written in these pages about Sosa going in cycles where he's very good, usually followed by stretches where he's barely playable himself. But it's not hyperbolic to say that Sosa has earned the nod more often than not based on the season he is currently having. On a team that needs offense from the bottom of their lineup, adding another bat, particularly one that is right-handed like Sosa, can lengthen it that much more. One could argue that Stott is merely stuck in a rut, that what we're seeing out of him is just a player that cannot shake his slump, but his data would suggest otherwise. Baseball savant sees a lot of blue on the stuff that counts when it comes to actually hitting the ball. Sure, the chase rate and whiff rate are still stellar, and that's an area where he has done well in his career, but the data that one looks at when Stott actually makes contact is near the bottom of the league. When he does hit the ball, he isn't doing anything with it. That's got to change, and soon. Now, when having the entire Bryson Stott conversation, there are clear positives in his game, that he's one of the best defenders on this Phillies roster, and particularly when playing next to Trey Turner, that is an important factor there. Also, his eye at the plate, as the article mentions, is a huge bright spot of his, and on a roster with guys like Nick Castellanos and Kyle Schwober, who's ready to take hacks up there, and plenty of other guys who are ready to go down swinging right away, having Stott with a little bit of patience at the plate certainly does stand out in contrast there, and something that is necessary when you factor in running up the pitch count on opposing pitchers, or just working the count, making smart decisions at the plate, but if he's not doing anything with the ones when he ultimately gets, that is a problem there. Now, to dive into the specifics of that in particular, I did want to highlight the fastball rate, and shout out to John Stalnus, who's all over this here, tweeting, it's all about the fastball. Bryson Stott can't hit a big league fastball. Stats on fastball. This is the average in the slugging and the hard hit percentage. In 2025, this year, he's posting a .242 average, a .382 slugging, and just a 33.7% hard hit percentage. Last year, .217 at the plate, .343 slugging percentage, and 28.5% hard hit rate against fastballs there. In 2023, which was the breakout season here, where he really found something at the plate, that he slashed .304 against fastballs there, from a batting average perspective. .439 on the slugging, a 41.4% hard hit percentage, but looking at the season prior, which was of course his rookie year, a .209 average, .324 slugging, and a 33.3% hard hit percentage there. Now, fastballs in general are something that hitters are typically looking to tee off on. The faster it comes in, the faster it can go out, and you have a little pop in your game, that's something that you can turn on a dime and do some production. That is just not the case with Bryson Stott, and that is something where, if that is something you're conscious of, that you can work around, that you're waiting for the breaking stuff, or have curveball that you want to match, that is manageable there, but we have not seen that on display this season. And a couple other stats that I did want to pull here, also coming from John Stalnus, that he says since 2022, there have been 148 players to accumulate at least 1,500 plate appearances. Over the last four years, Bryson Stott's WRC Plus of 89 ranks 136th. Among 22nd basemen matching that criteria, he's 19th. Only Adam Frazier has been worse. And to dive into a little bit of a breakdown by month here with Stott, this coming from Jeff Kerr of CBS, he tweets out that in March and April, Stott batted 297 at the plate. In May, 216. In June, 202. And in July, just 185 at the plate. Not trending in the right direction there whatsoever, and that is why we have to have this conversation. Now, from the Phillies' perspective, the obvious fix, which was pointed out in that Good Fight article, it is Edmundo Sosa. That is a guy, as referenced in the article, goes through stretches where he looks every bit the starting caliber second baseman that a team can hope for. That he does go on tears, and we've already seen one of them this season, where he was terrific for a stretch. But it does come in cycles. And while Sosa, when he's at his best, is deserving of that spot, there are other stretches where he's at his worst. And frankly, if there was a bit more consistency in his game, I think it's pretty likely that he would have clung on to a starting role, whether it was on the Phillies or another organization to that point. That has not happened, and I do think that is telling. But from the big picture conversation, we do got to bring this up with Bryson Scott. Now, I think it's particularly fascinating to compare it with Trey Turner, because in some ways they've been the inverse of each other this year. That Trey Turner in particular, while he's still taking strides in his defensive performance this year, there's just no way around acknowledging that he is one of the worst shortstops defensively in the MLB. Now, in defense of Trey here, he's been tearing the cover off the baseball this year. That he's been hitting the ball at a very high rate, and something that is obviously valuable to this Phillies team. And frankly, if we're going to do the direct comparison for what is more valuable to this Phillies team, it is the production at the plate versus what he's giving you defensively. And you can put up with some of the errors or some of the frustrations where he can't turn a double play on a play where he probably should or should get in the way or knock a ball down in a way that he just doesn't, if he is hitting at the rate that he currently is this season. That overall, you still have to grade this Trey Turner season as a success. Certainly, in my opinion, the best since he's got to Philadelphia. Now, contrast that with Bryson Stott here. And this is a dude who does deliver defensively. That he is, has gold glove potential at second base. He's that caliber of defender there that he can get in the way, knock everything down. And I've pushed pretty heavily on this channel of the concept of simply flipping those two in the field. Make Bryson Stott your everyday shortstop in a way that Trey Turner will not harm you as much defensively. Now, where Stott gets complicated here is the inverse of that. He just has not been a major league hitter this season. This Phillies team has a lot of things to address at this trade deadline. When we talk bullpen, talk another outfield bat, that only second base is anywhere close to the top of that list here. I think the honest truth here is they're going to ride things out with Bryson Stott being the second baseman for at least this season. But I do wonder if there's a bit of a growing doubt within the organization is, is this sustainable long-term? I talked about this with Alec Bowman. Of course, we had the daycare moment where these guys were waiting for him to grow up with Bryson Stott and Alec Bowman, each a part of that class there. We saw Alec Bowman take that all-star leap last season. And it was shocking to me that if he told me going into the year, which of these two will take that type of jump, Bryson Stott would have been my prediction there. But it's been exactly the opposite there, that we've continued to see regression from him, that the stats do not lie on what he's bringing to the table. And now we're talking about Bryson Stott at 27 years old. There needs to be a change within his game. And the point that was noted in the article here is there are three options to send him down to the minor leagues. I don't think that is going to happen. I think it's more likely than not that Rob Thompson allows him to play through his mistakes, figure something out, and hopefully find something here. They don't need Bryson Stott to be the best hitter on the team. They just need him to be a competent MLB hitter. And unfortunately to this point, he really has not been that this season. So that is a growing storyline that I do think is worth noting here. He does have two years of arbitration over the next two seasons. He certainly is not helping his value from a negotiation standpoint based on what he's producing on the field this year. But I do wonder if there's a wandering eye to when you evaluate this Phillies team, and we've had these big picture conversations, that they're pretty landlocked in a lot of the positions here. We'll see what happens with Kyle Schwaber, who's obviously an impending free agent. But you have Bryce Harper at first base. You have a ton invested in Trey Turner there. Cassiano's holding things down in right field, at least for the time being here, that if you're looking at spots to upgrade, could second base be a position specifically here that they're more interested in making a priority moving forward? Could that be a spot where you can raise the level of this entire Phillies team by upgrading in that potential position? The best case scenario for this Phillies team is Scott's able to find that 2023 form again, you can get that version of him, all of a sudden, you're feeling pretty satisfied. But now we're looking at a fairly decent sample size of time in which he's been pretty far from that type of player. So I'm officially on the watch list for Bryson Scott with my level of concern continuing to increase here. I don't love that it is trending in the wrong direction from a month by month basis here. And I do hope that after the all star break with a little bit of downtime, maybe he can turn things around. I know he's just had a couple kids here. Maybe he's tired at home, whatever the case may be. But the bottom line is this Phillies team needs more from Bryson Scott. And I don't think he's going to love the next steps if that does not happen. So we'll see what goes down in the second half of the season. But do want to hear from you guys in the comments. What is your level of concern with Bryson Scott? Is this something that I'm overreacting to? Is this something that you're on board with? Frankly, I do think I've pushed off this video topic for quite a bit of time, and it does feel the proper time to me to dive into it. So that's where I'm at on the Bryson Scott situation. Would love to hear from you guys in the comments. Is it Edmundo Sosa time? Is it time to approach the position differently moving forward? Maybe keep an eye on it for the offseason? And maybe does Bryson Scott need a little bit of time in the minors to sort things out? Drop your thoughts in the comments below. Appreciate each of you guys tuned in this video. As always, if you have not already, make sure you're smashing that subscribe button, dropping a like on this video here. I'll be back talking to you next time right here on Phillies Dive Tips.