Taryn Hatcher won’t be back as the Phillies’ in-stadium reporter this season.
The Philadelphia Business Journal’s Jeff Blumenthal reported Thursday that Hatcher’s deal with NBC Sports Philadelphia expired at the end of 2025 and that she would not be returning. Additionally, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Rob Tornoe reported that the network had eliminated her position altogether.
Hatcher joined the network in 2018 and spent the last several seasons working on Phillies games alongside Tom McCarthy and John Kruk. She also covered the Flyers, Sixers, and Eagles for NBC Sports Philadelphia during her time there. The news surfaced Thursday when NBC Sports Philadelphia sent out a press release outlining its spring training coverage plan, and Hatcher’s name was nowhere to be found.
Crossing Broad’s Kevin Kinkead reported Friday that he heard a different account from sources. According to what Kinkead was told, the network and Hatcher discussed her returning on a freelance basis, which would have allowed her to take on other work at the same time. Nothing came together. Kinkead’s sources characterized it as a standard contract situation, and aside from two people mentioning that executives wanted to see more commitment from Hatcher to the Phillies job specifically, there wasn’t any bad blood.
Whether Hatcher returns or not, NBC Sports Philadelphia doesn’t have anyone else in that role right now. The network doesn’t have any sideline or field reporters at all anymore, which is by design. In August 2020, Kinkead previously reported that NBC Sports Regional Networks planned to get rid of sideline reporters once basketball and hockey seasons finished. At that time, Kinkead wrote at Crossing Broad that Serena Winters and Taryn Hatcher would wrap up their work at the station before moving on to new roles or new jobs entirely.
Hatcher stayed through the end of the 2025 season, working only home games. Whether the Phillies replace her remains to be seen. She was good at the job. She handled the in-stadium work, gave the broadcast another voice, and — maybe most importantly — gave John Kruk room to be John Kruk. If NBC does bring someone in, Kinkead indicates that it would likely be only for home games at Citizens Bank Park and the playoffs.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.