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Not Just Injuries or Bad Luck, This Phillies Team Isn't Good Enough

This many games into the season a year ago, Jean Segura was hitting .344. 

He finished Sunday's loss at .268.

Through this many games in 2018, J.T. Realmuto was hitting .312 with an OPS over .900.

He struck out in the ninth inning Sunday and is down to .260 with a .743 OPS - 10 percent below the league average.

Cesar Hernandez's on-base percentage was 42 points higher at this point in the season a year ago.

The list goes on and on and on and on. The Phillies are underperforming. Offensively, defensively, starting rotation, bullpen. This does not look like the 90-win team many projected it to be. Some of that is due to injuries but more of it has been caused by players falling short of expectations.

The Phillies lost 6-4 on Sunday to the Marlins (see observations). They were out-hit 16-4. They were embarrassed this weekend by a team that opened the season with a $72 million payroll. 

It was the first time since August 2009 the Phillies have been swept at home by the Marlins, who were still the Florida Marlins back then. 

The deficit in the NL East just continues to grow - it's now at 6½ games with the Braves beating the Nationals Sunday.

"It's not good," Bryce Harper said. "We're just getting beat on both sides of the ball, pitching, hitting, everything. We have to do everything we can. We have to battle. Doesn't matter the count, who we're facing, if it's the Miami Marlins or L.A. Dodgers."

Over the last 35 games, the Marlins are 18-17. The Phillies are 15-20. We're talking more than a month of the schedule.

The hard truth right now is that the Phillies just are not that good. Their current roster, 1 through 25, is not as talented or as deep as the current rosters of the Braves and Nationals.

Switching hitting coaches won't magically transform this offense. Moving Scott Kingery up to the leadoff spot won't spark this lineup to new heights. Up and down the batting order, the Phillies simply need more from their everyday players. Harper needs to hit for more power. Segura needs to find the stroke he had for most of the last 3½ seasons. Realmuto needs to be the middle-of-the-order bat the Phillies thought they were acquiring. The bench players - whether it's Roman Quinn or Andrew Knapp or Sean Rodriguez or Maikel Franco - need to get a hit once in a while.

"I'm absolutely certain of it," Kapler said when asked if he's seen any reasons to believe guys like Segura and Realmuto can get back to their career norms.

"It would shock me if Jean Segura didn't get to his normal numbers by the end of the season. And it would shock me if J.T. didn't as well. Both those guys are skilled, athletic hitters. We don't look at stretches that bring our batting averages down by even 50 points because we know that happens over the course of a season. And we know that Jean Segura over the last three years is a .300 hitter. So we know that he's going to be somewhere in that neighborhood at the end of the year. 

"It's not a sure thing. It's not like you can chalk it up, but that's what we bet on. That's what we do when we acquire great players. We say there's going to be tough times. I'm not going to quit on our players in tough times. We're going to trust them to be who they are. That's what this game is all about. It's ebbs and flows. It's times of sh---y performance and times of successes and we get together as a group in the tough times. We fight together. That's what we're doing right now."

What if this team, as presently constructed, is not good enough to fight out of it? The goal, after all, is an NL East crown, not a one-game wild-card berth. 

It's a question many in the city are asking and one the Phillies' front office is certainly asking itself in private moments.

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