CLEARWATER, Fla. — A week or so after the Phillies' postseason ended last October with a disheartening NLDS loss to the Mets, Rob Thomson and Dave Dombrowski made clear that they were looking for the offense to do things a bit differently in 2025.
For the second straight year, they preached selectivity. They also said they wanted their hitters to do a better job of utilizing the whole field. Two of the names mentioned most that afternoon were the middle infielders, Trea Turner and Bryson Stott.
Turner was out for personal reasons on Monday. He is expected to arrive in Clearwater on Tuesday and take his physical on Wednesday.
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Stott has been at the spring training complex since pitchers and catchers reported last week. He's in a much better place physically. He's coming off a trying year in which he dealt with an elbow injury for most of the season and underperformed as a result.
There were times last season when Thomson considered shutting his second baseman down, but Stott played all the way through it, appearing in 148 games.
"Looking back, I wasn't healthy," Stott said Monday afternoon. "I was good enough to play and I'm not going to make excuses for that, I want to play. You never want to sit on the bench or anything. Just kind of sat back and let my arm heal up and be ready to go this year."
Stott did damage to a nerve in his right elbow last May in Miami.
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"I was hitting really good. I was like, 'All right, I'm feeling back to normal,'" he said.
"After the rough first month, kind of got it going. Took a weird swing. It made my pinky go numb. And I was like, 'It's whatever.' Then I took another one a week or so later and it just kind of lingered the whole time."
Stott did not feel pain with every swing. When he connected bat to ball, things felt normal. It was when he was out in front of a pitch that the hyperextension would bother him.
"It was just the swing-and-miss or a ball off the end of the bat or any hyperextension," he said. "It would take my fingers go numb. I'd have to call time and then it'd feel fine. I think as I kind of kept going and going, it got weaker and weaker. I still tried to put together long at-bats. It's not like I had a limp right arm. When I hit the ball, it was fine.
"… I was trying to compensate with different parts of my body. It got me into some bad habits."
Those bad habits altered Stott's swing. It altered his approach. It caused him to think more. Not a recipe for success.
His batting average dropped from .280 the season before to .245. His batting average vs. lefties plummeted by 60 points. His OPS fell from .747 to .671.
Unlike the year before, he did not utilize the whole field. His rate of batted balls to the opposite field was 13.3% compared to 17.8% in 2023. But it's not as if the skill set disappeared. With the elbow issue behind him, Stott thinks he can revert to his prior form.
"Just do what I did in '23 — use the whole field," he said. "Obviously just the type of hitter I am, my power's to right. I know that. The league knows that. If they don't want to throw the ball in there, then I've got to take my hits to left. And I'm OK with that because I could steal second, I could still third. We have plenty of guys who are going to hit the homers. My job is to to be on when they do."
Stott figures to hit anywhere from sixth through eighth in the Phillies' lineup. He has the tools to lead off but Thomson is averse to it with this current batting order because it would force him to either put three lefties in the first four spots with Stott, Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber or move Schwarber down to fifth, which is too low.
But those leadoff tools can also pay off batting sixth, seventh or eighth because if Stott can reach base at a .330-.340 clip — his career high is .329 — his speed can create problems and rallies at the bottom of the order.
“I think he's gonna have a much better season than he had last year,” Thomson said.
"I think whenever you have that type of injury, as you're approaching the baseball and thinking about your finish, I think it just changes your swing a little bit and you guard against swing-and-miss," Thomson said. "You decelerate and a lot of things happen. I think now that he's healthy, he'll get back to the same swing and get back to the same pitch selection and he'll be a much better hitter."