There is mourning in the City of Brotherly Love as the Philadelphia Phillies have once again bowed out of World Series contention — marking it the fifth consecutive year in which they've fallen short in October. While the Phillies did an admirable job of turning things around after a rough start to the 2026 season, they simply ran out of steam and ran into the better team in the Wild Card round — with the NL East champion Atlanta Braves sending them home with a 6-2 victory in Game 3.
The Phillies' veteran core is aging. In 2027, the likes of Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber, Trea Turner, and Zack Wheeler will be turning a year older. Turner, in particular, did not have a very good 2026 season. On Thursday, during the Phillies' season-ending loss, Turner went 0-3 from the plate, with his best moment of the contest coming in the eighth when he drove in a run via a sacrifice fly to give Philly some false hope.
For the 33-year-old shortstop, he is raring to get back to work and get back to being at his best after going through a tough 2026 campaign.
“I got a lot of work to do. Kind of just go over everything and just figure out as much as I can. Find answers. See what I did bad. I feel like, you know, this year is the biggest question mark for me offensively in a long time and I got to figure that out,” Turner told reporters after the Phillies' loss on Thursday, via NBC Sports Philadelphia on X.
Article Continues Below"Got a lot of work to do."
Trea Turner hopes to find answers on how to improve his game this offseason. pic.twitter.com/IVuoSDseNq
— NBC Sports Philadelphia (@NBCSPhilly) October 2, 2026
Turner put up a career-worst .675 OPS last season for the Phillies, and his fall-off from a 5 WAR player to someone Baseball Reference has in the negatives in terms of performance value contributed to the team's overall decline this year.
There's a chance that this kind of decline sticks considering that Turner will be turning 34 next June. But Turner is going to be fighting against Father Time with everything he's got, if his postgame remarks are any indication.

