Phillies built for shorthaul success
In a season where teams built for the short haul will thrive, the Phillies have a good chance to connect.
PHILADELPHIA » Four pitches into a Phillies intrasquad game last week, Josh Harrison turned on a Zack Wheeler pitch and planted it just over the left field fence. Panic. Tragedy. Time to be sellers?
So, it happens, even to $118,000,000 free agents. Legend says one of the worst pitchers in Grapefruit League history was Steve Carlton. He survived the trauma. But if there is an air of stress this season, a premature urge to overreact, a reason for once to sweat every baseball result the way a fan might on any given NFL Sunday, it’s understandable.
The losses will be problematic. As for the early-season variety, they could be catastrophic.
“I think every manager would love to have a quick start, where you get off to a hot start and you can ride it the rest of the year,” Joe Girardi said. “I think if you have a slow start you’re going to make it extremely difficult. You’re going to feel like you’re always running up hill to catch teams. In a season this
short, with only five teams coming out of our league and into the playoffs, it’s not a ton.
“It’s pretty tough if you have a slow start.”
There will be just 60 games, and the schedule will be unfair. Teams will only play within their division and against the corresponding division of the other league. For the Phillies, that means games against the AL East and NL East, each the best division in its league.
Good luck winning a wild-card playoff bid that way.
“I think we have a tough schedule,” Girardi said. “I think we are in an extremely tough division, a very competitive division. And I think the American League East has some really, really good teams at the top that we’re going to have to compete against. I think that our schedule will be very difficult. In saying that, everyone in our division has basically the same schedule that we do. They all have to fight through it, too. So in a sense, it is a sense that it is a somewhat even playing field within our division. Not necessarily within our league, but within our division.”
By Bryce Harper’s count, there will be up to 14 Cy Young candidates in the combined Eastern divisions. Even if such polls can’t be trusted, that projection is close. If so, and if the NL East is even a hair inferior to the AL East, then the threshold for winning the division will be low. It is so low, in fact, that the Las Vegas board is shining bright hints that the Phillies will be in a pennant race.
Unlike previous years when a team’s record could be influenced by what they did in cross-country road trips or by imbalanced schedules, there is little reason to plot the Phillies’ likely win total against, say, the Dodgers, who are expected to win a league-best 38. But as for NL East teams, it’s the Braves at 33.5, Nationals at 33.0 and Phillies and Mets at 31.5. That’s two games. Two. If Atlanta wins one fewer game than expected and the Phillies win one more, then it’s a dead heat. That may not happen. But the odds are not prohibitive.
The Phillies should have contended last season, but had some injury issues then turned off their manager, who was fired. They added Girardi, as respected a manager as there is in the game, upgraded their pitching with Wheeler, and have Jake Arrieta healthy. Though their bullpen will struggle to be average, there will be less reason to pinchhit for the starters with the NL adding the DH.
At the 60-game pole last year, the Phillies were on a five-game losing streak, yet were in first place in their division. They are better this season, deeper in starting pitching, with a more accomplished manager, Andrew McCutchen back to full health and at the top of the lineup and, so far anyway, free of any meaningful defectors or severely afflicted virus patients.
The Phillies are built for a short season. Very short. “We’re very vocal about that,” Zach Eflin said. “We understand that it is a different season, only 60 games. “It’s going to be interesting for a lot of teams this year. But at the end of the day, everyone has to show up and play baseball, and we’re confident that we can go as far as we need to.”
So far, Girardi is encouraged.
“We’ve seen a lot of good things,” he said. “We’ve seen some guys swing the bat. We’ve seen some pitchers throw well. It’s way too early to judge where they are at. But from a physical standpoint, I think they are pretty good.
“It’s the sharpness that I am concerned about. But it’s going to take some time.”
The Phillies are racing toward readiness, playing intrasquad games, trying different lineups, keeping their players healthy.
The early signs? “I’ve been somewhat pleased with some of our pitchers are at, especially some of our young kids, not knowing how much they had necessarily thrown,” Girardi said. “Every day you see more. And I’ve been somewhat surprised at how good our hitters have swung the bat in the live BPs. Usually, in live BP, hitters don’t swing a lot but because I think they know they we have such a shortened spring training and they need to take swings and get at-bats.
“We’ve had a number of guys hit the ball in the seats. It is kind of shocking because I usually feel hitters are behind and they don’t want to swing off their own pitchers. But that has not been the case.”
So the hitters get up, take their hacks.
In a season where teams built for the short haul will thrive, the Phillies have a good chance to connect.