Categories: Analysis

Will the Phillies build on their World Series run, or was it a one-off?

Bryce Harper and the Phillies reached the World Series in 2022. (Kyle Ross/Icon Sportswire)

The question of whether the Phillies’ 2022 season feels more like 1993 or 2009 — the previous two Phillies teams to fall short in the Fall Classic before heading in vastly different directions thereafter — is somewhat misleading.

The answer is both. Whether they rose from the ashes for a singular unforgettable run only to return to the embers the following season, or whether the championship approximation is a springboard for subsequent iterations of the franchise to build upon in their ascension to the promised land, the moment when six games’ worth of boundless optimism officially fragmented into heartbreak likely felt similar regardless of the decade or its context:

Pretty crappy.

That’s what happens when a team loses a World Series, especially one that felt within reach despite — and we can admit this now — objective inferiority. The Phillies’ 2022 season can be safely labeled a success, but it’s not just that it’s hard to see the forest for the trees, it’s that no one really has any interest in trying just yet.

But an offseason that will feel jarringly short began a little past 11 p.m. ET on Saturday night, which meant that as Bryce Harper’s full-time job as the centerpiece of the Phillies’ offense went on hiatus, his offseason side hustle as a not-so-subtle voice in the front office’s ear commenced.

“This is gonna be the same team next year — with a couple more pieces, I’d imagine,” Harper said following the Game 6 loss. “You know, Dave Dombrowski’s our guy. John Middleton understands that we want to win. He wants to win right now, too. So I’d imagine that we’re gonna be the same team, but with some more pieces to make us that much better.”

The Phillies have some room to get, as Harper put it, that much better — more room than the average team that falls two wins shy of a title. They were the second most successful team in baseball this year. Were they the second best? On paper, probably not.

That doesn’t matter in terms of how the team will be remembered. In fact, perhaps it makes the memories even more permanent, simply due to their unexpectedness.

But it does matter in forecasting whether the 2023 Phillies will lean more toward the 2010 club that won 97 games the year after falling short in the World Series, or the 1994 club that was 54-61 when the strike mercifully cut its season short.

Kyle Schwarber will turn only 30 in Spring Training. Bryson Stott looks like a franchise cornerstone. No one knows what will happen with Jean Segura. Ditto for Rhys Hoskins; even Alec Bohm. Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola remain — for two and, tentatively, one more year, respectively. Nick Castellanos is here for four more and needs to be better. Harper will be here forever.

Perhaps the greatest source of optimism that the 2022 Phillies are more like the 2009 team — namely, in that they won’t stink the following year — comes in the form of two players who had nothing to do with this run in the slightest: Andrew Painter and Mick Abel.

Harper is right that the Phillies will be mostly the same team next year. That was far from a foregone conclusion in September, when another near collapse seemed to be lending itself to an offseason of significant turnover. Fast forward a month, and the World Series run might have given the front office incentive to add not by subtraction, but by, well, addition. Trea Turner, anyone?

There are red flags. J.T. Realmuto, the best catcher in baseball, caught 1,281 ⅔ innings this season and will turn 32 in March. Wheeler and Nola threw deeper into the season than ever before. Castellanos is here for four more years and really needs to be better. Zach Eflin, David Robertson, Noah Syndergaard and others are free agents. Harper will be hitting in Philadelphia forever — the only question is whether he’ll be fielding, too.

And then there’s the whole fairytale element of it all. The moments that littered the Phillies’ first NL pennant run in 13 years are countless. It’s unlikely they can recreate a run this deep (or deeper) while relying on that much magic along the way.

That doesn’t mean success must be fleeting. It just means it might have to come about in different, more tangible ways.

“This is sustainable,” manager Rob Thomson said Saturday night, “this type of winning atmosphere and winning team, because of that fact: This is a good taste to get these guys here in this moment. All these young players, we’ve got a good group of veteran guys, and our system is starting to get loaded up with good arms at the upper end of the minor league system. I think this run has the potential to be very sustainable.”

Whether the 2022 Phillies end up resembling the 1993 group or the 2009 one in terms of the encore is anyone’s guess. But whichever side they lean toward, those three teams will always be linked by a few shared characteristics.

They lost the World Series. They lost it in six. And whether they rose from the cellar of the league or came fresh off reaching its pinnacle, it stung, because an opportunity slipped away — and there’s no way to know when it might return.