If the Phillies miss out on the playoffs, is it still a successful season?
Is the Philadelphia Phillies current season a success without making the playoffs? That, as the Danish guy would say, is the question. It is “the question” because it’s extremely unlikely the Phillies will make those playoffs even as a wild card team.
You can do the math yourself for the probability of a team making the playoffs when it’s six games out of the second wild card spot with four teams in front of them, and 6½ behind in their own division, with 13 games remaining. However, since few students are required to take a course involving probability anymore, just take my word. Those chances are slim.
There are seven games left with the Atlanta Braves, but if the Phillies pull off the division championship, it will dwarf both their highly improbable collapse in 1964 and the almost equally improbable success in the NL East in 2007.
In some regards, however, the evaluation of the season as a success or not is beside the point because no one sees the Phillies, 4-11 in September, as capable of advancing in the playoffs if they sneak in. The season might be counted a wild success if they won, minimally, the NL Championship. Short of that, the season is a failure because the team has developed no obvious plan about what they should do moving into 2019.
The front office of every MLB team chatters incessantly about “building for the future.” The worst team does it, the best team does it, the Phillies do it. Even when Philadelphia brought in veterans at the trade deadline and beyond it this year, they balanced their moves with an eye toward being “good for a long, long time,” to quote GM Matt Klentak.
Two Players for the Phillies to Keep
And yet, they have very, very arguably no idea which players to keep moving forward outside of slugger Rhys Hoskins (31 HR, 91 RBI) and ace Aaron Nola (16-5, 2.42 ERA, 0.97 WHIP).
They’re in second place, and they can only say they should definitely keep two players.
Worse and weirdly, Hoskins is the only player who arguably shouldn’t move out of his outfield slot even though he’s actually out of position there. He’s proved to be a somewhat better than serviceable left fielder, and he’s probably only slightly better at first base, his supposedly “natural” position. The rest of the outfielders – the real outfielders, not Scott Kingery – have shown nothing or too little to base firm decisions on.
Odubel Herrera is either a flake or an enigma, just what he was when the season began. Nick Williams isn’t so consistent as a regular player he should be taken off the bench, where he’s actually a decent pinch hitter. Aaron Altherr had such an awful year he could actually argue it was a fluke. (Didn’t he just hit two homers and drive in five in a blowout win? Yes, he did.) Speedy Roman Quinn should probably be given the center field job, but right now his MLB sample size this year is only 37 games. (Bite the bullet since the slash line is .330/.365/.527? Who knows?)
Moving to the Infield Mystery
If anything, the infield moving forward is more mysterious. One can argue that the only set infielder is first baseman Carlos Santana since he gets on base and has driven in runs (101 BB, 82 RBI to date), but his contract (two years, $40 million remaining) and .231 batting average annoy the fan base. It shouldn’t. However, Santana could be moved.
The rest of the infielders, because of management’s love of “versatility,” basically played musical chairs. Between trying everybody in as many positions as possible and computer-driven shifts, everybody played everywhere from short right field through the other three traditional infield positions. No wait – Maikel Franco may not have ever been in short right field. As a result, the Phillies infield was one of the worst in baseball, defensively.
Oh, you say correlation isn’t causation? Go away. This isn’t sophomore philosophy class.
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Also, no infielder put up offensive numbers that would make any other team say, “Wow!” In terms of moving any infielders, all should be considered, including Kingery. His attractive, long-term contract could become someone else’s project to complete, but it probably won’t be.
At catcher, the team probably should keep veteran Wilson Ramos and see if young Jorge Alfaro can learn to catch better and throw more accurately next year because he surely didn’t do that this year. Ramos was a smart acquisition when the Phillies looked like division-title contenders, and he produced. Unfortunately, no one else did more than once a week after he arrived.
Finally, the team knows little about the back end of the rotation they didn’t know when the season began. Jake Arrieta will surely stay with the club because no one will want to take on his hefty contract after a season that thus far has produced a 10-9 record and a 3.77 ERA, but Zach Eflin, Vince Velasquez and Nick Pivetta have all proven only they need to win their jobs again next spring. All of them should be trade bait in a deal dangled for, say, a player like Jean Segura, who could be left alone at shortstop, hit about .290, and steal 30 bases.
Will the Phillies do something like that? Who knows? No matter what they say, at the end of 2018, they really are like Sgt. Schultz in the ancient TV sitcom Hogan’s Heroes. They “know NOTH-ING!” Even if the Phillies stay above .500, this season hasn’t been successful unless they’re hearing Sgt. Schultz whispering, “Manny Machado.”