What was something of a pretty good week for the Phillies came to a crashing halt on Sunday with the news of Jose Alvarado getting slapped with a suspension of his own doing.

Three up

Bryce Harper

Maybe I should criticize Harper more often?

A week after hearing from multiple sides about his struggles, Harper decided to do something about it by collecting eight hits in 24 plate appearances, two of them doubles, and driving in four. There is still very little in terms of over the fence power, something that shouldn’t be ignored when it comes to evaluation Harper’s season, but getting at least somewhat hot would do this lineup wonders. He’s still the player team’s will gameplan around, even if he is being joined in that category by Kyle Schwarber, but at some point, the homers have to start to show up.

Alec Bohm

Six hits in 22 plate appearances, including a home run himself, is starting to help Bohm’s overall season line looking a bit more palatable. He struggled in the beginning of the season and was starting to generate conversation about his job security, but those whispers seem to have died down a bit. He’s had a 128 wRC+ since April 15, so we can kind of dump him in the 2024 Nick Castellanos bucket so far where his season needs to be evaluated as sort of a before and after point.

As with Harper, you’d like to see some more power coming from his bat, so hopefully it follows when the weather starts getting nicer more consistently.

bad National League teams

Nothing cures a team faster than getting to play some bad teams on your schedule. And folks, let’s not parse things – the Pirates are bad.

It’s usually a depressing thing when those games go un-won, but the Phillies took care of business and now get to move to Colorado to play the hapless Rockies. Denver is a house of horrors pretty often for the Phillies, so let’s hope these four games go as we expect they should.

Thank you, schedule makers of the game.

Three down

Aaron Nola

You’ll have to excuse me if I still believe that ultimately, Aaron Nola will be fine. He’s got too long of a track record for me to write him off with such reckless abandon as others are. Yet one cannot simply push aside that he has been bad more often than he has been good this year. His three Nola-esque starts were nice to see, showing that there is still the ability left in there. Instead, now we’re doing to wondering what version we’ll see of Nola each night. His last start looks like it can be chalked up to an injury that he was fighting his way through, but it still happened and needs to be accounted for. From here on out, it might be best to recalibrate your expectations for Nola from good #2 starter in a rotation as good as the Phillies to #3 or even #4 starter right now that eats innings. Teams need them, but the trust wanes.

Max Kepler

That hot week that Kepler had seems far away, doesn’t it?

That week that Kepler had made it seem not inconceivable that the team could keep running out a platoon in two different positions in the outfield. And they still very well could. It just seems so difficult to do so now. We already know that they’re going to have to be in the market for a reliever now (thanks, Jose), but adding outfield needs on top of that seems a bit much for a team that doesn’t have many prospects to deal from as it is.

Jose Alvarado

Duh.

We’ll have much more about Alvarado, but c’mon man…