Stuck

 

This is getting old, isn’t it?

The rebuild has been over for a while, but the Phillies continue to spin their wheels, stuck in mediocrity. After four seasons and hundreds and millions of dollars spent, I’ve arrived at a troubling thought: the Phillies are terrified of success.

It’s no doubt that the team on paper has holes. The organization has focused most of its energy on creating a powerhouse offense while mostly ignoring the back end of the starting rotation, bullpen and defense. The farm system has been devoid of top-shelf talent for the past decade or more.

These issues don’t always paint the road to failure, however. Just this year, we saw clubs that turned out to be more than the sum of their parts, like the Giants and Cardinals, and in 2020, the Padres, Marlins and White Sox took advantage of a shortened season and wider postseason field to end their long playoff droughts.

I look at the Phillies, and I see a squad fully capable of making the postseason. Bryce Harper won the MVP. Zack Wheeler should’ve won the Cy Young. Ranger Suarez sparkled in bullpen and rotation. Rhys Hoskins, though he stopped walking for some inexplicable reason, put up solid numbers, and Brad Miller provided sufficient pop after Hoskins got hurt. Andrew McCutchen hit 27 home runs at the age of 34. Even with a historically awful bullpen, the Phillies still had a chance to make some noise in 2021.

And then came the end of September.

This is an area of futility at which the Phillies excel. It felt like maybe this year could’ve been different, but once the season got inside that final week, the boys in red pinstripes folded like they always have.

Over the past four seasons, the Phillies tweaked the roster, brought in big names, changed managers. By season’s end, they still ran out of gas. Here are the win-loss records over the final seven games of each Phillies team over the past four seasons:

2018: 2-5 (part of a 9-game losing streak)
2019: 2-5
2020: 1-6
2021: 1-6

 

Those 2018 and 2019 squads only got those two wins at the very end after the wheels had already fallen off. Take those away, and the Phillies are only 2-22 over the last four years in games that mattered the most. Such a poor showing was the most frustrating in 2020 and 2021, when the Phils were fighting for a playoff spot.

At first, people blamed Gabe Kapler, and he was replaced by Joe Girardi, a veteran manager with a proven success. And yet, in two seasons Girardi’s managerial record is two games below .500, the same as Kapler.

When I look at the big picture, I feel like the Phillies culture must change. When the organization declared that the rebuild was over, it adopted a lazy approach to winning – add a bunch of pieces and hope it works out.

Outside of Harper and Wheeler, I don’t sense a whole lot of pride on the team either. Hitters on winning teams consistently work the count and extend at-bats, and pitchers on winning teams consistently retire batters once they get to two strikes.

I look at a team like the Dodgers who have an airtight system (complete with a mental health division) that is the same from the lowest level of the minor leagues to the major league club, or the Rays, whose player development is so fine-tuned that it can turn any pitcher into an out machine, and I ask, “Why can’t the Phillies be like that?!”

Of course, the short answer is that they aren’t willing to spend that kind of money, and honestly, a lot of teams aren’t, but the Phillies do have the money to put together a winning team. They simply need to make the players and fans believe it.

There’s a reason Carlos Santana had a career year with the Indians after his one down year with the Phillies. There’s a reason Kapler went to the Giants and led them to a 107-win season. There’s also a reason why a seemingly talented team collapses at the end of every season. At their core, the Phillies don’t believe they can play in October. Until that changes, they never will.