With one-third of the season over, the entire National League reached Memorial Day still thinking playoffs. Even the worst team, the 23–31 Nationals, are five games out of a wild-card spot. It is a function of both the extra wild card added last season and abject mediocrity.
For inspiration, every middling team can look to the 2022 Phillies—including the ’23 Phillies. Last year’s Phillies are proof that in an expanded playoff world you are never more than two or three hot weeks from the playoffs (and possibly a change of managers).
Those Phillies started out 21–29 before running off a 15–2 streak against six nonplayoff teams. That’s all it took. Outside of those 17 games, Philadelphia was 72–73. It slipped into the playoffs with 87 wins as the third wild-card team, knocked off the Braves and Padres and held a two-games-to-one lead over Houston before losing the World Series.
This season, Philadelphia (25–28) is only one game better after 53 games than it was last year. But manager Rob Thomson, who replaced Joe Girardi to jump-start the Phillies last year, said this year’s team is better positioned to make a playoff run.
“There’s more talent than a year ago,” Thomson says. “Trea [Turner], Taijuan [Walker], [Craig] Kimbrel, [Gregory] Soto … I just think you look at the roster and you see more talent. We just haven’t been able to put it together in all phases of the game yet. There have been times the hitting has been good, the pitching, the defense, the bullpen, but not at the same time. I know it’s going to come.”
Likewise, Thomson believes the experience of getting to the sixth game of the World Series will serve these Phillies well, as they try to climb out of playing losing baseball for a third of the season.
“There’s no more pressure you’re going to get than playing in a World Series,” he says. “There’s a sense of calm about the club knowing they can handle the pressure.”
There is no soft spot in the June schedule for the Phillies to leverage this year. They are in a 29-game stretch in which they play the Braves and Mets 13 times. They managed to split four games in Atlanta over the weekend.
What must happen for a Philadelphia comeback story again this year? In order, here are their biggest needs.
1. Trea Turner needs to get on base.
The 1–2 spots in the Philadelphia lineup have an on-base percentage of .273, matching the franchise all-time low set in 1968 (the Year of the Pitcher, when Tony Taylor and Cookie Rojas sat atop a lineup that got Gene Mauch fired).
Turner’s story is a familiar one among high-profile players that changed teams: He is pressing to justify the investment in front of a new fan base. Thomson compared Turner’s “breaking in” issues to those of Tino Martinez with the Yankees in April 1996, after his trade from Seattle.
“His at bats have been better of late,” Thomson says.
Turner had been over-rotating with his hands in his load phase, a typical sign of pressing, which caused him to be late on fastballs. He is hitting just .218 against four-seamers and sinkers, the ninth-worst mark among qualified hitters. The worst? Teammate Kyle Schwarber (.157), who has been in a deep funk.
