The Phillies did not lose Wednesday night because they failed to create chances. They did not lose because Chase Burns overpowered them. They did not even lose because Alan Rangel, making his second big-league start, gave them only 3 1/3 innings.
They lost because the part of the roster that keeps revealing itself as the biggest concern before the trade deadline showed up again.
The bullpen cracked. Then it caved.
In an 11-5 loss to the Reds at Great American Ball Park, the Phillies watched a 2-0 lead disappear into the Cincinnati night, with Tanner Banks and José Alvarado absorbing the loudest damage on a night that turned into a bullpen referendum. The Reds hit five home runs, became the first team in the majors this season to homer four times in one inning, and turned what had been a competitive game into another reminder that the Phillies’ late-inning formula still needs help.
The Phillies actually started well. Gabriel Rincones Jr. doubled in the second, Justin Crawford followed with an RBI triple, and Crawford later scored on a wild pitch to give Philadelphia a 2-0 lead. Burns, one of the National League’s more electric young arms, needed 106 pitches to complete five innings and issued six walks. The Phillies made him work. They just could not make the Reds’ bullpen matter enough.
Cincinnati tied the game in the third on Sal Stewart’s two-run homer off Rangel. Then the fourth inning became the kind of sequence that sticks to a team’s scouting meetings.
Noelvi Marte led off with a solo homer. Rangel got one more out before Don Mattingly went to Banks, hoping to steal a couple outs from the left side of the bullpen. Instead, Edwin Arroyo doubled, Elly De La Cruz crushed a two-run homer, Stewart followed with his second homer of the night, and JJ Bleday made it back-to-back-to-back with another drive to right-center. By the end of the inning, Cincinnati had turned a 2-2 game into a 7-2 game.
Mattingly told reporters afterward the plan had been to get through the bottom part of Cincinnati’s order and reach the left-handed pockets with Banks. It did not hold. “Obviously that went sideways,” he said.
That is the trouble now. The Phillies are not just searching for better results. They are searching for trustworthy roles. Banks, who was one of their steadier left-handed options after arriving from the White Sox in 2024, now has a 7.14 ERA. His command and pitch mix have not carried the same deception. He allowed four hits and four earned runs while recording one out Wednesday.
Banks was blunt afterward, saying hitters are too often seeing the same looks from him. “It’s hard to get guys out when you’re doing the same thing,” he told NBC Sports Philadelphia.
The sixth inning brought another uncomfortable data point. Alvarado entered with the Phillies down 7-4 after J.T. Realmuto’s solo homer had given them a flicker. He walked three, threw 35 pitches, and surrendered Marte’s bases-loaded double down the left-field line. The Reds led 11-4, and the game was essentially gone. Alvarado’s ERA climbed to 7.03.
That number is hard to ignore, no matter how good the raw stuff still looks. Velocity alone is not solving innings. Matchups alone are not solving them either. Tim Mayza, who worked a scoreless eighth and owns a 2.81 ERA, has been the Phillies’ most reliable left-handed reliever. But one dependable lefty is not enough for a club trying to chase down Atlanta, hold off Miami, and position itself for October.
Kyle Schwarber added his major league-leading 32nd homer in the ninth, passing Mike Schmidt’s 1979 franchise mark for most Phillies home runs before the All-Star break. Realmuto also homered. Crawford had two hits. There were offensive positives.
But the night was not about the offense.
It was about the inning that got away. Then another one that confirmed the issue. And with the trade deadline approaching, the Phillies’ bullpen problem no longer looks like a rough patch.
It looks like the thing they have to fix.
