Phillies and their fans got what they paid for
Team’s investments pay big dividends in opening win over A’s
The season was six pitches old and the bell was already ringing. The Phillies paid Kyle Schwarber to take the good pitches and punish the bad ones, and he wasted little time with either. Three weeks after his arrival injected a beleaguered fan base with some much-needed juice, the 29-year-old slugger set the powder keg alight, scooping a 3-2 fastball from his shins to the facade of the second deck.
This is what they envisioned, wasn’t it? A full stadium, a sharp crack, the crescendo of realization. A decade had passed since an opening day brought with it the expectations that greeted the Phillies at Citizens Bank Park on Friday afternoon. Ownership’s decision to green light a $180 million spending spree shortly after the conclusion of the lockout not only enabled manager Joe Girardi to trot out the franchise’s most potent lineup since the 200711 glory years, it underscored one of the fundamental truths of big-market baseball. Money may not buy happiness, but it sure as hell can buy excitement.
“It’s kind of how you draw up your first day,” Girardi said after the Phillies closed out a 9-5 season-opening victory over the Athletics. “Right?”
Well, kind of. In the end, opening day was as much a reminder of the things the Phillies are going to need as it was of those they have. They are going to need Aaron Nola to the be the front-line starter he was for four seasons prior to last year, the one that he was for six innings on Friday before unraveling in the seventh.
They need their infield defense to be better than the unit that committed a couple of errors to allow an additional run home after a three-run home run knocked Nola from the game in the seventh. Absent that, they’ll need a bullpen that can consistently bail them out the way it eventually did on Friday. Baseball is as much about pitching and defense as it is about dingers.
The Phillies have plenty of questions to answer on those fronts before we consider them World Series contenders.
Yet while offense alone will not suffice, it can carry them plenty far. The lineup that we saw on Friday has the potential to be a relentless beast, its combination of power and patience giving pitchers little chance to breathe and viewers little chance to turn away. The first five spots in the batting order were staffed by players who finished above the MLB average in pitches scene per plate appearances, with four of the five ranking near the top of the leaderboard.
The eight-hole hitter, rookie third baseman Bryson Stott, saw 15 pitches in his first three plate appearances, the last of which saw him yank a potential home run just foul before he singled for his first big-league hit. When A’s starter Frankie Montas left the game, he’d thrown 92 pitches to 22 batters in just five innings of work.
“They wear you down,” Nola said of the Phillies lineup. “They obviously have power, gap-to-gap power, but when they work counts and are also aggressive in the zone, it makes it tough on a pitcher.”
By the end of the day, the Phillies reached base 16 times with five walks and five extra-base hits. They scored runs in five of their eight offensive frames. Eight of the nine hitters reached base, seven of them multiple times. After Oakland pulled to within 6-5, Nick Castellanos drove Bryce Harper home with an RBI double in the bottom of the frame. In the eighth, Stott atoned for a couple of suspect fielding plays with an RBI double that pushed the lead back to three. He later scored on a single by Schwarber.
“One through nine, I thought the lineup flowed really well,” said Harper, who scored a pair of runs and drove in a third. “It looked really good. . .I thought everybody swung the bat really well. It was just fun to see.”
It’s never hard to find hope on opening day. Plans look their best on paper, after all. Kyle Gibson takes the mound on Saturday, Zach Eflin the day after. One game into a 162-game season, the ifs are still plentiful. For the first time in a long time, though, there is a palpable legitimacy to the optimism flowing through Citizens Bank Park.
“I think the jitters get everybody on opening day,” Harper said.
“They get the fans, they get us, they get anybody in the clubhouse. Everybody is excited to be here, excited to get going. One-and-oh, great start to the season. We’ve got a lot more baseball to play and we’re looking forward to it.”
Maybe it was the weather, the sun rising early and high, the steel and glass chameleons of the distant skyline matching the blue blackdrop above the horizon. Spring’s promise is often as fleeting as its meteorology. Yet as Schwarber rounded the bases in the first inning and raised his finger skyward, it was at least possible to imagine that he was foretelling something real.