`Stay loose and sexy, baby!'
After avoiding slow starts of seasons past, Phillies relish being atop the NL East
The Phillies are hot, that much is certain, with Bryce Harper and Zack Wheeler powering and pitching the team to the best record in baseball and a recent home winning streak that nearly matched the franchise record. Hot, yes. But sexy, too?
Well, no team has been quite as alluring to the packed crowds at Citizens Bank Park as the Phillies. Just ask them.
Brandon Marsh, the outfielder with the Rip Van Winkle whiskers, was miked up for an ESPN Sunday night game when he was relayed a fan question from social media by the broadcast booth: If you had to start a rock band, who would you take from the team and what's the band name?
Marsh rattled off catcher Garrett Stubbs, slugger Kyle Schwarber and outfielder Cristian Pache as his fellow band members, then as he hustled off the field after making a catch, blurted out the name that has since launched a blossoming business of the catchphrase T-shirts.
“Stay Loose and Sexy, baby,” Marsh said.
Marsh said he has his own band shirt and the Phillies have revelled this week in the attention the fictional name has stirred.
Stubbs — the backup catcher/ clubhouse DJ/ Bud box hat fashionista — wants in as guitarist and backup singer. Of note, he does not play guitar or sing much more than on team karaoke nights.
“Pretty electric from Marshy,” Stubbs said.
Taking centre stage as an MLB headline act, the Phillies are about as plugged in to playing good baseball as a team can be these days. Just take a look at their greatest hits — such as Harper's three-run homer in a Monday win over San Francisco. For an encore? Harper smashed a grand slam the next night against Toronto.
“As a team, any given night, everyone's going to do their job,” Harper said. “We're not really worried about our numbers as individuals. We're just going out there trying to win the games we need to. No matter who comes through at the right time or who comes through each night.”
Want consistent hitting? Third baseman Alec Bohm wrapped up an 18-game hitting streak this week. Perfect pitching? Ranger Suarez — 6-0 with a 1.77 ERA — takes the mound Friday for the start of a three-game series in Miami.
“There won't be many people, probably, at the ballpark,” the Phillies' Canadian manager Rob Thomson said. “You've got to internally create your own energy. We have a good group of people that can do that. Stubbs, Marsh, they tend to bring that every day.”
Some of the super stats tell the story.
The Phillies are 26-12 and their .684 winning percentage was tops in baseball entering Thursday's games.
They won 11 straight home games before Wednesday's loss to Toronto, one shy of matching the Citizens Bank Park record. They have won 11 of 13 games overall and 26 of their last 36. Harper has hit three times this season with the bases loaded — and has two grand slams. They are 22-1 when leading after six innings and 23-0 when leading after the eighth.
Philadelphia's biggest accomplishment, though, just might be this: They are leading — yes, leading — the NL East by two games over the Atlanta Braves.
The Phillies ended each of the last two seasons among baseball's best. Led by a homer-happy, bat-spiking offence, the Phillies lost the 2022 World Series in six games to Houston. Last season, the Phillies took a 3-2 series lead into Game 6 of the NL Championship Series before losing the final two games at home to Arizona and bowed out.
What's not forgotten in Philly is the long climb it took for the Phillies to reach October.
They were 25-30 at the end of last May. The Phillies opened 2022 at 22-29 when they fired manager Joe Girardi and promoted Thomson. Slow starts and sizzling Junes — 18-8 last year; 19-8 in 2022 — had become the norm for the Phillies.
This year's team does have unfinished business in the post-season. The first World Series championship since 2008 remains the ultimate goal. But a great wire-to-wire regular season and even the division title that has eluded them is on the table this year.
One hiccup is two-time all-star shortstop Trea Turner will miss at least six weeks with a strained left hamstring. Turner had started all 30 games this season and was hitting .343 with two homers, 10 doubles, nine RBIS and 10 stolen bases. Without him, the Phillies are still 4-1.
“I think what happened the last two years at the end is really motivating for this group,” Thomson said. “These guys, they come to play every day . ... It's just a really good group, a special group.”
On the stat sheet, the Phillies are better than those 2022 and 2023 teams.
That won't matter much come October. But if Harper again goes on a late-season tear and Wheeler keeps shutting teams down, the Phillies are primed to make another World Series run.
Well, they can just as long as they remember to stay loose and sexy, baby.