Phillies prove they are no fluke -- now, time to become legendary

It’s so easy to forget that this time last year, there was an entirely different narrative surrounding the Philadelphia Phillies compared to what exists now.

Remember where they stood last September 26? They were in the midst of their second five-game losing streak of the month, and had just dropped an 11-inning Sunday heartbreaker to the Braves. They sat just 1.5 games ahead of the Milwaukee Brewers for the final National League wild card spot with 10 games remaining, and it was far from a guarantee they would secure it.

You see, the prevailing reputation of the Phillies just 365 days ago was one of embarrassment, of failure at the most pivotal moments. They were less a team on the cusp of something special, than a club that always seemed to fall apart down the stretch.

They had let the Braves slip away in the closing days of 2021. They had lost seven of their final eight games in 2020 to end up just one game out of a wild card spot. They lost eight of nine in 2019’s final month to plummet out of realistic striking distance for the playoffs. They went 8-20 in September 2018 to blow any chance they had of snatching a wild card. It was four straight seasons of September chokes.

2022 was setting up to simply be more of the same — a mentally-fragile, fatally-flawed team destined to collapse when the going got toughest.

Of course, that’s not how 2022 ultimately played out. They shook off their September slide, clinching that long-awaited playoff berth three days into October. And then, they just kept winning. They shocked the Cardinals with a Game 1 comeback on the road in the wild card round and cruised to an unlikely sweep. They secured divisional supremacy over the Braves. They showed San Diego who the real Cinderella of 2022 was. Suddenly, the Philadelphia Phillies — a team most fans expected to meekly fade into oblivion — were headed to the World Series.

But once the euphoria of their ridiculous run began to dissipate — aided by a harsh dose of reality in the form of the loaded Houston Astros — reasonable questions regarding the quality of the club reemerged. After all, it’s not like the 2022 Phillies were some on-paper juggernaut. They had talent, sure, but they were still a 6-seed that got hot at the right time more than anything else. If you caught a Phillies fan in just the right mood of natural skepticism in December or January, you very well may have heard said fan wonder aloud if that sugar rush of a playoff run was more a mirage than anything else, 1993 for the next generation of Philly sports diehards, especially after it became clear that star Bryce Harper would miss a large chunk of the looming season.

Yes, they felt different than those collapsing clubs from 2018 – 2021. Kyle Schwarber, Nick Castellanos and manager Rob Thomson gave the clubhouse an entirely different vibe as opposed to those teams, with the help of demonstrative youngsters like Alec Bohm, Bryson Stott and Brandon Marsh.

The Phillies were more fun, to be sure, and for one crazy month in October of 2022, they were undeniably good. But were they actually good? Or would they simply slide back into irrelevancy as quickly as they emerged?

Regardless of how this October plays out for the Phillies, Tuesday’s 3-2 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates provided the final piece of evidence: yes, this team is actually good.

It wasn’t an easy climb back to the postseason. Harper ultimately missed just a month, but his power didn’t fully return into well into August, leaving the team’s best hitter an OBP-centric shell of himself at the plate in the interim. An already-thin rotation (especially after hotshot rookie Andrew Painter left the picture due to injury) became functionally even thinner when Aaron Nola was replaced by the spirit of 2009 Cole Hamels. Big free agent signing Trea Turner was a first-half flop. When June 2 rolled around, the Phillies were seven games under 0.500, with a nearly identical record to the previous year — except this time, they didn’t have the easy remedy of firing a disaster of a manager to fix things.

A fluke Phillies team — one that had truly lucked into its World Series run in 2022 — would have collapsed. They wouldn’t have been able to overcome its two highest-paid players significantly underachieving at the plate, or another slow start that played into all the doubts surrounding just how “real” this Phillies club was.

This team is no fluke. They’re for real.

They’re for real because key young players took big steps forward, like future Gold Glover Stott, and “I re-learned how to take pitches” Marsh, and “I apparently turn into a Silver Slugger with men on base this year” Bohm. They’re for real because they received big-time contributions from afterthoughts and castoffs and callups, like Cristopher Sánchez and Jeff Hoffman and Tuesday’s hero Johan Rojas. They’re for real because the underachieving big-money guys kept plugging away and finally got back on track, starting with Turner (with a big assist from the Citizens Bank Park faithful), and then Harper, and now maybe even Nola, who excelled in his final two starts of the season, including the playoff clincher.

This isn’t just a team that got hot at the right time once. They’re legitimately a very good baseball team — and regardless of how they fare this postseason, they’re not going anywhere anytime soon.

It’s not like the Phillies snuck into the playoffs this time around, after all. They didn’t merely clinch a spot on Tuesday; they locked themselves in as the top wild card team, guaranteeing home field advantage through the entirety of Round 1. They would have made the playoffs even if MLB was still going by the “only the division winners and one WC” structure that was in place for decades. There’s every reason to believe that this will be far from the last time this Phillies core celebrates a playoff berth.

The fans, once scornful and distrusting of their local baseball team, now couldn’t be more onboard. The Phillies may be legitimately good, but they’re far from perfect, combining a “never say die” attitude with an infuriating penchant for inexplicable lapses. But somehow, their erratic nature makes them just as endearing as if they were a true juggernaut. There’s something especially gratifying about watching the sports team embodiment of the “That sign can’t stop me because I can’t read!” internet meme prove that their model of sheer chaos can actually be a sustainable formula for success over a 162-game season and not merely a few glorious weeks.

The Phillies are good again. They’re fun again. Now, they just need to become champions again.

Obviously, one hopes they pull it off this season, and while the Braves are rightfully the favorites to represent the NL in the Fall Classic this time around, it would be foolish to count the Phillies out. In truth, now that Harper is hitting like his old self, Turner is back to top-of-the-lineup form, Castellanos has shaken off his poor 2022, the kids are better, and the bullpen is now full of fearsome fireballers, the 2023 Phillies are better on paper than the 2022 squad that pushed Houston to six games last year. They’ve got a real shot.

But this doesn’t seem like it’ll be their only shot.

When they proved unable to take down the Astros last November, that was the fear — that the Phillies had just squandered what would be their only chance for a title in this era. Now, that sentiment seems antiquated. This feels like the start of an era of contention, of multiple cracks at earning rings — a belief that would have seemed painfully naive as recently as last September, before everything changed.

Even if they don’t ultimately bring a World Series title back to Philly — either this year or over the next few — this group is going to be remembered fondly now, not as the chokers of 2018 – 2021, but for the antics of the Daycare, for Harper’s love affair with the city, for the many, many epic moments that they’ve already pulled off and the ones yet to come.

With their second consecutive playoff berth, they’ve officially put that old reputation to bed. Now, their goal is to become true legends in this city, in the only way that is truly possible: via a title.

Let’s see if this crazy crew can pull it off.