What the Philadelphia Phillies have gotten for their money
The Philadelphia Phillies were, among many evaluators earlier this year, an odds-on potential NL East champion, if not more. “Things” have proved difficult.
Roughly a week and a half ago it was observed that between Sept. 4 and 11 last year, the Philadelphia Phillies fell from 3½ games off the second Wild Card slot to 6½ games from that playoff berth. This season the week leading into play Sept. 11 would end with the second of four games the Fightin’s had scheduled against the Atlanta Braves, who are winning the NL East moving away from the pack.
Before play Sept. 4, Philadelphia had been a full game better than the 2018 version of the squad. Their game Sept. 10, however, was also the fifth of 20 games in a row against teams with winning records. The Phillies load to haul to get even the second Wild Card was baked into the schedule.
Moreover, they hadn’t helped themselves much the night before against Atlanta. Philly ace Aaron Nola didn’t pitch well, particularly, giving up four earned runs in six innings without locating his pitches even as well as he did in his last game, when he gave up five earned runs in only five innings.
Without Nola, though, the Phillies would be two games under .500 instead of five over. So, what did their very expensive offense do against Braves starter Mark Foltynewicz (who had lowered his ERA to a mediocre 5.00 and booked the win)?
No much, folks. Not much.
They had no runners in scoring position who hadn’t hit the ball out of the park (Corey Dickerson and Cesar Hernandez), and they lost 7-2. The loss put the Phillies behind two teams and the Chicago Cubs, who had been holding onto the second Wild Card for a fair number of days.
The following night they would send soft-tossing Jason Vargas out against Atlanta’s Max Fried, 11 years his junior and the owner of 16 wins already, and a lineup featuring three 30-homer bombers.
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It wasn’t a pretty game, but Vargas battled, and the team supposedly committed to winning (remember the “stupid” money remark), the Phillies, won on home runs, 6-5, including an inside-the-park ball that could have been called a catch by some knucklehead umpire or review umpire.
Sept. 11 has been a date for evaluations for all but nine months of this century, many of them regarding more serious matters than baseball. However, it doesn’t seem a bad date – not far from the season’s end – to review what the Philadelphia Phillies got with all those All-Stars secured last winter, one of whom now holds a contract worth just a bit less than a third of a billion dollars.
No one can really fault Bryce Harper for the Phillies woes although many have tried in Negadelphia. He has driven in 102 runs and played hard every day. Also, J.T. Realmuto has delivered and is seemingly a lock for the NL Gold Glove at catcher. He had one fairly extended slump in July. Otherwise, it’s hard to find three games in a row without a hit in his ’19 record.
Yet, here the Phillies are before play Sept. 11: 2½ games behind the second Wild Card as people went to the sleep in the East. They’re four games better at the same point than last season in that sad race, true, but really, to quote the forgotten great Peggy Lee, “Is that all there is?”
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The Phillies will surely “keep dancing,” as Lee recommended, until the end of the season, but immediately after they are eliminated, they need to decide how to address their significant pitching problem. They’re also going to have to drag out the brainstorm whiteboard and their markers for the subject of offensive consistency.