Phillies’ veteran poise makes a difference in Gibson’s book
PHILADELPHIA >> Kyle Gibson arrived from Texas with about half a season left of whatever it was the Phillies were trying to do, looked around the clubhouse and drew at least one conclusion.
These guys, he figured, are not going to panic.
He had a point about a collection of players grown elsewhere, groomed elsewhere and in many cases more successful elsewhere than they ever will be in Citizens Bank Park. He saw that they were old enough to understand the situation and pennant race they were about to enter through the employees’ entrance, and that they were just tough enough to not consider that to be a burden.
“I think we have a really veteran team that, mindset-wise, is in a really good spot,” Gibson was saying. “The comeback and walk-off win Friday was great for us. We showed a lot of fight and we showed a lot of grit. And that’s how it is going to have to be.”
Gibson had just rolled through the first six innings of a combined Saturday night shutout of Arizona that helped nudge the Phillies to within four and a half games of the firstplace Braves. By Sunday, when they would defeat the Diamondbacks, 7-4, the first seven players in their lineup were at least 28 years old and had played for a combined 22 different franchises. Make that 23, if each of Freddy Galvis’ two Philadelphia stops are counted. Jean Segura, J.T. Realmuto, Andrew McCutchen and Galvis were at least 30 years old. Bryce Harper and Ronald Torreyes were 28. Starting pitcher Ranger Suarez was 26. Catcher Rafael Marchan, involved only because Andrew Knapp is on the Covid IL, was 22.
In most cases, the best franchises will be built from the farm system out. It’s how the Phillies built both of their eras of sustained success, first with Mike Schmidt, Larry Bowa, Greg Luzinski, Bob Boone and more, later with Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, Cole Hamels and others. The 2021 Phillies, for many reasons, were not constructed that way. Rather, they were rubberbanded together like a collection of wrinkled baseball cards, a former Pirate here and a former Yankee there, a former National and a former Marlin, and even Galvis, who started with the
Phillies, went on a world tour, and returned.
While both approaches can and have worked, the Phillies’ inability to stray too far from the .500 mark all season was due to the reality that so many of them were allowed to leave some other team. Not that the players didn’t try – not even Pete Rose tried harder on a play-toplay basis than the gift to the sport that is Harper – but they never functioned properly as a defensive unit and their lineup was ill-fitting and clunky.
It’s why the Phillies will enter September chasing the Braves, not the other way around.
It’s also why the Braves might regret letting them sit in that second-place sweet spot for too long.
“Every night we take the field, it’s going to be a dogfight, I don’t care who it is,” Gibson said. “But with a veteran team, I like our chances to win those dogfights and go out there and play hard and come out on top. But every night is going to be important.”
The Phillies, it has been proven, were not constructed to win at the usual division-championship pace. They were too old, too brittle and had too little passion for a franchise that a farm-grown nucleus would add.
Yet put Harper and Realmuto, McCutchen and Segura, Didi Gregorius, Zack Wheeler, Aaron Nola and Gibson on the field for a month and their veteran calm can help steal a race on a sloppy track.
Joe Girardi had challenged his team to win the six-game homestand that ended Sunday. Instead, the Phils were 3-3, and lost Rhys Hoskins and Zach Eflin for the season. So a weeklong festival it was not. Yet when it was over, they were on a three-game winning streak, still faced a favorable September schedule, and had the pedigree to rally into first place.
“We have to get better,” Harper said, earlier in the series. “We’re running out of time.”
Though no two cases are identical, the 1983 Phillies were also branded as a thrown-together crowd of aging former stars. But they went 22-7 in September,
won the NL East, upset the Dodgers in the NLCS and played in the World Series.
The Phillies are about to try it again, and with very few of them lugging around the pressure of trying to prove they deserve to be in the big leagues.
They are thick with former All-Stars and a couple of MVPs, enjoy some in their-prime talents, have a responsible front end of the rotation and a manager who has won a World Series.
As they say in the fight game, the last thing a former champion loses is his punch. Kyle Gibson saw something in that clubhouse. It should be enough to remind the Braves to keep their hands up and their chins down.