Philadelphia Phillies: Five emerging keys to the 2020 season

A mixture of certainties and question marks will be key to the Philadelphia Phillies success in 2020.

With day one of all-player drills in the books for the 2020 Philadelphia Phillies and their first spring training game on a near horizon, their fans’ concerns have not been much allayed. After a massive cash outlay over the past two off-seasons to improve the team, a word uttered more often about them than it should be on Philly sports talk radio is “mediocre.”

This is curious. On Opening Day, the Phillies will likely field two former MVPs (one whose contract says he’s worth well over a quarter of a billion dollars), a pitcher who nearly won the Cy Young award in ’18, and the best catcher in baseball.

Another player on the field had a .308 batting average from ’16 through ’18, and their manager will start the season 200 games over .500 in over 1600 MLB games overseen.

There are Phillies pitching questions beyond their first two starters, and they have been and will be much discussed, but not today. As important as pitching is, there are Five Fightin’ Keys now emerging to a successful season beyond the expectation the team’s best three starters will pitch reasonably well.

Two of those matters seem near locks – expectations are high, but not unrealistic. Three other keys are iffier.