Recent Success and Challenges: Philadelphia Phillies
While the Phillies have been one of the best teams in Major League Baseball over the past two seasons, winning the National League pennant in 2022 and coming within a couple games of a World Series championship, they’ve also been one of the most maddeningly inconsistent.
Before this recent run of postseason success, the Phillies went home early before October for a decade running, often falling apart down the stretch after looking like contenders as late as August and early September.
Even after signing Bryce Harper to a massive contract ahead of 2018, it still took another four years before the Fightin’ Phils sniffed the playoffs, as the team just never managed to put it all together for a full season. Here’s a look at some of the highs and lows the Phillies have navigated in recent years.
Bullpen Blowups and Late Season Collapses
The 2019 Phillies were one of the most mercurial teams in recent history, a club that simply refused to let their fans rest easy. They ended up finishing with an 81-81 record, missing the playoffs by eight games. When one considers that they blew 17 late inning leads in the first four months of the season alone, though, you realize that they really should’ve been in the playoff picture—if not National League East champions—if only their bullpen had managed to pull their weight. It’s unreasonable to expect that a team converts on every save opportunity over the course of a season, but the league average typically sits around 65 to 70 percent.
No matter how strong the team’s odds of victory looked that year, they were a great bet at ESPN sports betting sites to end up coming back down to earth in catastrophic fashion. To make matters worse, this was the same year when Harper’s former club, the Washington Nationals, ended up winning it all, adding insult to injury for a club that always seemed to wither away in key moments.
The 2020 Phillies took a similar path in their COVID-altered season: with two weeks left, they were right in the thick of things, but a 3-7 record in the last ten games left them two games below .500 and out of a playoff spot.
The 2021 club finished two games above .500, but still couldn’t vault themselves into the playoff picture despite a difficult regular season by the Atlanta Braves, who lost superstar Ronald Acuña Jr. to an ACL tear in the second half of the season, but ended up winning it all anyway.
2022 World Series Run
After a decade of being not quite good enough, the Phillies made the most of their return to the postseason, coming within two wins of claiming their third World Series championship in franchise history.
While they fell just short in the 4-2 series loss to the Astros, the team managed to shake off a number of demons, like Bryce Harper’s inability to win a playoff series and their struggles in close games. The Phillies made it to the World Series against all odds, always coming up with the big hit or shutdown pitching performance, like their comeback in Game 1 of their Wild Card series against St. Louis or the Rhys Hoskins homer off Spencer Strider that helped put the Braves to bed.
The team’s postseason performance showed that they can win in October with their current core, and left the front office energized heading into a big offseason of free agent acquisitions.
For me, the most important development of all was Harper’s postseason success. After seeing the Nationals win a World Series without him, much had been made of his presence as a leader—or lack thereof—and his ability to show up despite playing through injury, earning an NLCS MVP award in the process, was an important step in his Hall of Fame career.
What Happens Next?
While the Phillies have been one of the best teams in baseball, which is among the most popular sports in America, over the past two seasons, they still have room to improve. Signing Trea Turner to a massive free agent deal was a good step to bolster their roster, but the team could use more pitching help. Aaron Nola and Zach Wheeler are as good of a one-two punch as you’ll find in the Major Leagues, but the team hasn’t found consistent options behind them.
That’s a big problem when October rolls around, as they say that pitching wins championships: both they and the Arizona Diamondbacks came close to winning it all with a patchwork back end of the rotation, but it’s difficult to win bullpen games and piggyback starts consistently. Having a rebound season from Taijuan Walker or picking up a top pitcher at the trade deadline could could be the difference between a World Series title and an opportunity squandered.
