Game 1 of the NLCS is Monday night — and the Phillies won’t be in it for the second straight year.

After committing $189.4 million in player salaries this season alone to trying to get back to the World Series, the Phillies continue an unusual trend. If you don’t include the COVID-shortened 2020 season (which saw the Phillies narrowly miss an expanded playoff field), the Phillies have increased their regular season win total every season since 2017. No team has ever done that five seasons in a row.

They won the NL East for the second straight year with 96 wins, and made the postseason for the fourth straight year — equalling the run of the legendary 2008-11 Phillies.

But it’s all been for nothing. After falling in the 2022 World Series, the Phillies have taken a step back in the postseason every single year, faltering in the NLCS in 2023, and the NLDS in 2024 and 2025.

What’s wrong with this team?

Each offseason (or trade season) they seem to address an issue from a prior failure and yet it never leads to a deeper postseason run. At the trade deadline in July, the Phillies improved their outfield and the back of their bullpen. The team also had one of the deepest and most consistent pitching staffs in recent memory, the envy of the other 29 MLB clubs.

A combination of bad performance and user error has undone their months of hard work in less than a week each of the last two autumns.

The answers going forward aren’t as simple as the three issues we’ve identified here, but they’re a good place to start. Here’s why we think the Phillies have imploded in October:

They stop hitting

Presented without comment, the Phillies’ hitting stats during each of the last two regular seasons and postseasons (using the respective postseason rosters):

Each of the postseason sample sizes are obviously very small, you’re talking four games in their 3-1 NLDS losses to the Mets and Dodgers against 162 games in the regular season. But when you build a team around hitters who are often extremely streaky, this is what happens.

Kyle Schwarber had an 0-for-21 stretch before he hit two home runs in Game 3 in Los Angeles. Nick Castellanos played in all four games and went 1-for-18. Last year, J.T. Realmuto went 0-for-11 while Brandon Marsh and Alec Bohm each went 1-for-13.

In postseason play, the Phillies are obviously going to be getting the best pitching they’ll face all season. Which is also a factor.

The problem is easily identifiable. The solution not so much. There isn’t much the front office or Rob Thomson can do. Sending a slumping player to the plate is like playing roulette. Each at bat could be the one that breaks the dam, or could be another wasted at bat.

Fixable or not, it’s easy to see the trend here. For what it’s worth, in the 2023 NLCS the Phillies hit .231 — the season average was .256. For a team that was dripping with clutch at bats from their 2022 run, the clutch has been totally dried up for a while now.

They get over managed

It’s almost like managing MLB postseason games is a totally different sport. During the regular season marathon, a manager has to rely on the rule of large numbers. Over the course of a 162-game season, chances are someone like Bryce Harper is going to hit and Aaron Nola is going to pitch well over a very large sample size. Lulls, slumps, diversions from the mean happen all the time — see Jesús Luzardo’s 20 runs allowed over two starts in the middle of 2025 — but a good manager is patient and sticks with his gut.

That’s different in the postseason. The Phillies needed to win three out of five games and there is a tendency to take bigger risks, like the disastrous bunt attempt in Game 2. Or to give players a shorter leash, like pulling Luzardo in the 11th inning in Game 4. Or to try and do too much, like Thomson’s walking of the slumping Shohei Ohtani which led to the Dodgers’ scoring on a walk in Game 4.

Thomson’s .580 career win percentage as regular season manager is the highest for any skipper in franchise history with 40 or more games managed. He’s made the playoffs in all four of his seasons at the helm of the Phillies.

It seems like it’s an intangibles thing. And Thomson might not have them.

The time off

It’s been harped on constantly but it’s another one of those factors that is hard to ignore. In both of the years the Phillies won two or more postseason series during this current run of success, the Phillies were a Wild Card team and did not have five days off before they started their October. They just kept on playing.

In each of the last two postseasons, the Phillies had to face a Mets team that was red hot, and a Dodgers team that was peaking at exactly the right time. Meanwhile, they were snagging fly balls and taking batting practice for five days straight.

Team workouts and scrimmages can only do so much. The Phillies have clearly been affected by the static time and it didn’t help the way the MLB scheduled the NLDS.

After sitting for five days, the Phillies played Game 1 before a day off, Game 2 before a day off, and had they won Game 4, that would have added a day off before Game 5. That’s five games over 13 days, when the Phillies are used to playing 11 or 12 games over 13 days.

Clearly there is a way to overcome this. The Dodgers had a bye in 2024 and won the World Series, and the Yankees last season had a bye and made it to the Fall Classic as well. But in two tries this team hasn’t been able to get back to midseason form after having off.