PARTY LIKE IT’S ’08
Phils recognized 10-year anniversary of championship team before completing 4-game sweep of Fish
By the time Jimmy Rollins stepped to the microphone in January 2007, he had six seasons of 80win baseball in his back pocket as proof. He’d seen his 2006 Phillies finish a game behind the eventual World Series champion Cardinals in the Wild Card standings. And undeterred by the 12-game gulf between the Phils and Mets the previous fall, he proceeded to declare the Phillies the team to beat in the National League East. On paper, at least.
To employ J-Roll’s false modesty strategy, one could easily draw parallels — on paper — between what Charlie Manuel Sunday called “the now Phillies” to the forerunners of the 2008 World Champs, who gathered Sunday at Citizens Bank Park for their 10th anniversary celebration.
No one’s made the bold declarations that Rollins once did … yet. And the 2018 squad totes five straight seasons of 89 losses or more into this resurgent campaign.
But the hallmarks are similar.
“They’re a young team,” 2008 starting pitcher Brett Myers said Saturday afternoon. “We were a young team, ’05, ’06, we just missed the playoffs, Wild Card and stuff. And this team kind of reminds me of it. They’re young guys, and once they learn how to win together, I think they’re going to be perfectly fine, and I think they already are showing that.”
There are shared traits, no doubt. The current Phillies are built around a core of position players who grew together in the minors, from Rhys Hoskins to Nick Williams to Maikel Franco. The first waves of high draft picks rewarded for years of moribund baseball are starting to crest in Scott Kingery and JP Crawford.
The current squad is ahead of the game in terms of homegrown pitching, generating a bona fide ace a la Cole Hamels in Aaron Nola and a potentially elite closer in Seranthony Dominguez. How a slew of young pitchers like Vince Velasquez and Zach Eflin mature could make the Phils a contender for the long haul.
But there’s something unique about the current squad. Where the runway to the 2008 World Series triumph and 2009 pennant were long and gradual, Gabe Kapler’s team has sustained into August a quantum leap from last year. The 2018 team is 21.5 games better than the 2017 version entering Sunday. It’s occupied first place for the last month.
“I think there is a similarity, and I think they love coming to the ballpark, that shows,” Manuel said. “They keep things pretty even keel, they can bounce back after a loss pretty good.”
“I had multiple conversations with a couple of different guys about that exact thing,” Hoskins said after Sunday’s 5-3 win over the Marlins. “They see a lot of themselves in this team, and obviously that’s pretty exciting for us.”
There may be something to the adversity built into the 2008 trajectory. Most players from that build still talk ruefully of the 2007 Division Series, when the Phillies lapped the collapsing Mets but were swept by the equally shocking Rockies.
Between the ’07 ouster and previous near misses, a raging hunger had built in that nucleus. Manuel said that when he arrived at Spring Training in 2008, the old managerial hand didn’t have to say much, since that bitter taste drove the Phillies harder than he could hope to. Rollins didn’t invent the narrative but rather was the first time that the deep, behind-the-scenes belief was aired in mixed company.
“Jimmy came out and said we’re the team to beat, and we all thought it and we talked about it as a team, but we never said it publicly,” Myers said. “And when he said it, we were like, ‘he’s right. I mean, we are.’
“We felt like we really were. We knew that we had the talent and the ability to go and win a World Series, and for us to put it together and everything like that and to watch us … We tried to put it together as a team more than anything. And we started gelling a little bit more towards the later part of the season because we knew what was going on. We absolutely knew that we had the ability to do it because we went through it in 07 and in 08, it just all came together. Because we had that dog in us.”
The dog in the current Phils hasn’t yet been let off leash. A road swing to Arizona and San Diego this week might do it. Or nine games left to put the nail in Washington’s coffin. Or seven of the last 10 headto-head with second-place Atlanta. It’s been questioned by national media, as in, are the division leaders a World Series contender or a midsummer mirage?
The pressure isn’t on this team to be the 2007 Phillies. The window to compete is just opening, and a .500 season as a stepping stone was the reasonable expectation, which they’ve so far exceeded.
In that regard, the 2018 Phillies are ahead of schedule. But they’re on a path that they hope leads to another World Series, another celebration like this weekend’s further down the line. And while the challenge of October has turned back many recent would-be champs on their first ascents, Phillies who’ve been there before believe this group is on its way.
“I think sometimes when you get there — I’ve been there a couple of times when you get there and it’s a first time — what happens is you’re so excited and happy to be there that if you’re not careful, it’ll get away from you quick,” Manuel said. “I think that’s the best way to describe it. Say the first game or something like that or the second game, all of a sudden you look up and you’re in the seventh or eighth inning and you’re not winning the game. If you lose that game, then all of a sudden, you will feel the pressure and things like that.
“And I think that those things, once you learn how to deal with those things and you stay together and determined and stay focused, I think that’s what leads into it.”