Categories: Analysis

Phillies head to Chase Field with some demons to exorcize

Ranger Suarez will start Monday night’s series opener against the Arizona Diamondbacks. (Photo by Gregory Fisher/Icon Sportswire)

There are a few stadiums across the league that have served as houses of horror to the Philadelphia Phillies in recent years.

Marlins Park/loanDepot Park — until, perhaps, July — was the most notorious. Coors Field in Denver has earned that designation as well. Truist Park has had its fair share of meltdowns.

But there’s another stadium out west that, while it’s reared its ugly head relatively infrequently, has arguably proved just as daunting as those others in recent years: Arizona’s Chase Field.

The 2017 Phillies lost three of four at Chase Field in late June, which didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things (they entered the series 23-48) but is nonetheless fun to recall.

In 2018, the Phillies traveled to Chase Field for three games from Aug. 6-8, fresh off a four-game sweep of the Miami Marlins and on a five-game winning streak overall. The Phillies were 63-48, leading the National League East by 1 ½ games.

That lead would grow no larger. The Phillies dropped two of three to the D-Backs that week, igniting the infamous 17-34 stretch on which they ended the season to miss the playoffs.

The Diamondbacks could’ve offered an opportunity for the 2019 Phillies to separate from the Washington Nationals, with whom they shared the second wild card spot, in early August. Nope. Arizona, a mere .500 team at the time, took two of three, kicking off a 22-28 finish for the Phils.

And then — perhaps the most perplexing of them all — there was 2021. After an eight-game win streak, the Phillies dropped series to the Los Angeles Dodgers and Cincinnati Reds, moving from two games up on the Mets to two games back. The Diamondbacks, meanwhile, were 43 (!) games under .500, featuring the worst record in baseball.

Arizona swept the Phillies, finishing the job with a six-run outburst against Zack Wheeler — of all people — that just about completely evaporated the euphoria of the previous week. The Phillies missed the playoffs by more than those three games, but had that set gone the other way, things could’ve turned out differently.

In all, those series constitute a 3-10 record against a team that went 312-336 in those four seasons. In years when the Phillies were actually contending — so all of them except for 2017 — the Phillies went 2-7 at Chase Field, and the Diamondbacks were 219-267.

There are reasons to believe this series won’t go the same way. For one, the 2022 Phillies are simply better than each of those previous teams. And while they’ve had the occasional blow-up (see: Rangers; Cubs), they’ve generally taken care of bad teams, going 43-22 against underwater opponents. They also have Ranger Suárez and Aaron Nola slated to toe the rubber the first two games (though Zac Gallen and his 2.66 ERA will oppose Nola on Tuesday).

In any case, it’s hard to fully move past how the Phillies have performed at Chase Field the last few years — particularly in August, with the team in contention. Those are the exact circumstances this week in Phoenix, meaning the Phillies have some demons to exorcize the next few days as they continue their march to October.