With Aaron Nola’s failure to launch this season, it is now fairly obvious that the Phillies will start a playoff series with Cristopher Sanchez, Ranger Suarez, and Jesus Luzardo on the mound. They are our three best starters and it isn’t close. Granted, it will probably only take Topper one half-way decent Nola start to plug him in there, but even that doesn’t seem very likely. It just so happens that our three best are all lefties. Is that an advantage? A disadvantage? Let’s go through possible playoff foes to see. All stats as of September 8th, 2025.
Milwaukee Brewers (Playoff Odds 100%)
It should come as no surprise that the Brewers, who specialize in working counts and getting on base, do exactly that against lefties. However, all the power is isolated in 2 players. Andrew Vaughn and Jackson Chourio TORCH left-handed pitching as both have a 1.000+ OPS. Vaughn is batting .411 while Chourio has a .603 SLG. After them though, there are a couple solid batting averages but no power. The Brewers best player this year, Christian Yelich, does his damage almost exclusively against righties with just 4 of his 27 HRs come against southpaws. Only Blake Perkins has an OPS over .800 at .823. William Contreras somehow walks better against lefties, but everything else falls off a cliff. We would need to avoid having men on base with Chourio or Vaughn up, but otherwise, it is a favorable matchup.
| Stat | MLB Rank | |
| AVG | .268 | 2nd |
| OBP | .340 | 2nd |
| SLG | .400 | 14th |
| OPS | .740 | 8th |
| HR | 39 | 20th |
Los Angeles Dodgers (99.3%)
There is a lot of good news/bad news in terms of lefty splits in this Dodgers lineup, so let’s use Homer buying the cursed Krusty Doll to go through it. Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman, and Max Muncy are all left-handed. That’s good. Ohtani is still good against lefties and Freeman is unsurprisingly even better. That’s bad. Max Muncy will be unplayable though. That’s good. His right-handed hitting backup is Phillie killer Miguel Rojas. That’s bad. Despite having a great year, right-handed hitter Will Smith hits much worse against lefties. That’s good. Despite having a bad year, right-handed hitter Teoscar Hernandez hits much better against lefties. That’s bad. I’ll stop. The Dodgers aren’t very unlike the Phillies. Some days they mash, some days they don’t without much rhyme or reason.
| Stat | MLB Rank | |
| AVG | .253 | 8th |
| OBP | .320 | 7th |
| SLG | .442 | 3rd |
| OPS | .762 | 4th |
| HR | 60 | 1st |
Chicago Cubs (99.6)
The Cubs have serious problems when it comes to hitting lefties except in the power department. MVP candidate Pete Crow-Armstrong’s bat is finally matching his fielding. Fortunately for us, it is only against righties. He has a triple slash of .186/.220/.385 against lefties. Chicago often doesn’t even play him against lefties, but there is no chance he is relegated to pinch hitting for a whole series, especially when his backup, just promoted Kevin Alcantara, can’t hit at all. At first base, Michael Busch and his .878 OPS against righties will be neutralized by his .556 OPS against lefties. He might be out completely. Justin Turner and his solid .750 OPS would be the one taking his place. Nico Hoerner is the complete opposite. His .665 OPS against righties would have been a nice thing to exploit. Instead, we would get his .927 OPS against lefties. At least he only has 6 total HRs this season. They can hit the ball out of the park as a team, but not much else.
| Stat | MLB Rank | |
| AVG | .245 | 14th |
| OBP | .314 | 16th |
| SLG | .424 | 5th |
| OPS | .738 | 9th |
| HR | 55 | 4th |
San Diego Padres (97.9%)
At the trade deadline, the Padres added Ryan O’Hearn and Ramon Laureano from the Orioles. It’s a good thing too, because other than Manny Machado and Xander Bogaerts, this team had a serious southpaw problem. Look at these OPSs: Tatis – .668, Merrill – .631, Arraez – .611. Formerly PED suspended Laureano is having his best season in the Bigs with a .930 OPS against lefties. O’Hearn is hitting lefties out of nowhere to the tune of an .828 OPS, well above his career .627. With three of their top hitters all completely neutralized, it will create some lineup issues over a full series. Do they still bat Tatis #1 and Arraez #2 against a lefty in the playoffs?
Just in case you were wondering how things have changed for the Padres since the trade deadline: AVG is slightly down while HRs, OBP, SLG, and OPS are all slightly up from the below. It is a negligible difference though.
| Stat | MLB Rank | |
| AVG | .246 | 13th |
| OBP | .316 | 15th |
| SLG | .371 | 21st |
| OPS | .687 | 19th |
| HR | 36 | 24th |
New York Mets (93.5%)
While the Mets have some serious star power, their problem is that they have no lefty specialist in the lineup. Jeff McNeil (L) and Mark Vientos are their biggest threats, but their OPSs are still sub .835. You would assume righty Pete Alonso would be crushing them, but his average is only .221. He has been a reverse split guy throughout his career, but never this drastic. Soto has a predictably high on base, but the power is out. Lindor is a switch hitter, but his down year in general is particularly bad against lefties. All in all, unless a righty is on the mound, they just are not that special.
| Stat | MLB Rank | |
| AVG | .241 | 17th |
| OBP | .318 | 10th |
| SLG | .393 | 15th |
| OPS | .710 | 13th |
| HR | 42 | 15th |
Note: The Giants have been coming on strong, but only have a 3.1% chance to make the playoffs. However, they have the lowest batting average in baseball against lefties at .215
Verdict
In the end, the Dodgers hit lefties best end of story. Then you have the Brewers and Cubs with the former only hitting for average while the other only hits for power. The Mets will have the least change in their lineup in terms of specialists (just Vientos over Baty I think) whereas the Cubs could be without two of their best hitters against our rotation. The Padres addressed their holes, but 3 of their best hitters are dead in the water. Unfortunately, the most favorable matchups are on the wrong side of the bracket right now.
The Phillies are up 4 games on the Dodgers for the #2 seed, but the teams play 3 games in LA next week. If we hold on, that means a bye to the Divisional Round where we would face either the 3 or 6 seed. Right now, that would be the winner of Dodgers-Mets, but the races are still close. Simply from a hitting standpoint, we would want to face the Mets. Obviously though, things are not so simple. Unfortunately, we are lined up to face our two biggest problems. Ideally, the Padres catch the Dodgers in the division while falling behind the Mets in the Wildcard. That would set up Padres vs Dodgers and Cubs vs Mets in the first round.
All stats courtesy of Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference
Philly Front Office 
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