Philadelphia Phillies: Hamstrung by their 2020 schedule?

Four and fifth place teams in 2019 face tough rows to hoe in the East and West; the Philadelphia Phillies have one of the worst draws.

The title of the article by Matt Gelb in The Athletic June 24 was intriguing: ‘’Return-to-play primer: The Phillies most affected by MLB’s 60-game season.”

Damn, I thought, the guys at that website are good.

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They got the full schedule already? He knows the names of the infected Phillies? Both?

It turned out to be neither. Instead, what was offered was a fairly thoughtful piece on the insecurity of certain Phillies, particularly as regards the 60-game format’s potential impact on their contracts. Eight individuals were singled out (including two front-office people), and another ten or so were included under more general, and partly fuzzy headers.

Bryce Harper, however, should be subtracted from the first eight. Gelb comments, obviously, that Harper signed his big contract at just the right time.

The problem here is the writer may have overestimated his audience’s patience with a discussion of very generous contracts for MLB players in the current climate, even at their reduced potentials this season. Give him a pass on the implication that he considered the contracts/situations of all the players on all 29 other MLB teams.

(He probably gave up at five or six, but if he ever sees this, he can correct me.)

But this did get me to thinking about the schedule a bit after another nudge towards that consideration by a comment on Philly’s sport-talk radio station WIP. One of the mid-day hosts asserted the Phillies got a rotten deal under this format, and he didn’t mean in terms of poor Didi Gregorius’ worries about his contract next year.

Specifically, this commentator was focused on the 20 games the Phillies will have to play against the AL East.

I specifically thought at that point, “Well, what about their own division?”

Here’s what the Phillies face, assuming that MLB doesn’t shut down again two days after teams begin “summer training” because of widespread infections:

Ten games each against Washington, Atlanta, the New York Mets, and Miami. Four games each against the New York Yankees, Tampa Bay, Boston, Toronto, and Baltimore.

Since it was so long ago, perhaps some need a reminder that this means the Phillies will have to play 28 of their 60 games against teams that last year won at least 93 games, and 42 games against teams that had better records than theirs. This includes both third-place teams in play, the Red Sox, and Mets.

Yes, everything this season will be thrown into a cocked hat because of the long layoff, and Andrew McCutchen will be available on opening day. However, it’s not clear that the Phillies changes over the off-season suggest they will even have winning records against those two third-place teams in 2019.

Moreover, Toronto has some very interesting young players, and Miami simply can not be terrible every year they don’t win the World Series.

And that doesn’t even matter. For long stretches, Miami has beaten up on Philly and lost to everyone else.

In fact, the Phillies have to hope that what will happen is that they come out hot and stay hot in a freakish way under the inspired leadership of a new manager and absolutely brilliant performances by their veteran hitters, Aaron Nola, and Zack Wheeler.

And nobody important can contract COVID-19.

For two months.

It could happen. An opening series against the Orioles might help.