GDT 3/31/25 Colorado Rockies (Márquez) @ Philadelphia Phillies (Sánchez, C)

Didnt know it was possible to get a hold and a loss...

Kepler hits the ball really hard. If the defense is still good he looks to be a decent pickup. Ross looked pretty good as well. Hope he can do this in 2-inning stints once the season gets going.

I guess he got outs in a save situation then left the game before the runs scored that were charged to him.

We definitely seem to beat up mediocre bullpen pitchers. If we could hit starters this team could be something special.

Add German to the list of tough starters. No sun/shade problems to explain the domination.

Thankful for the W, but expect the Phils to dominate the Rocks.

Nice to finally have a LF that isn't a hole in the lineup. Nice hitting from Sosa who looks comfy at SS.

Had 'em all the way, Harry!

Kinda feels like if you score 6 times as many runs as the opposition you dominated, even if those runs came later in the game, they still count.

One of the Good Phight's staffers on twitter:

The Phillies are going to lead the league in lopsided wins in which the fans were (ticked) off about their lack of hitting for most of the game.

If Nola's start had gone as well as the other three guys it would have been a lot less noticeable. Which is to say, the other teams aren't hitting either.

Another LHP on Wednesday and it's also supposed to be Kepler's off-day (they switched him with Marsh after Marsh had a hot game but now Kepler's hot).

There's plenty of truth in what you are saying but I still think October results are mostly flukish - and that includes the success the Phillies had in '22 and for the first half of the '23 postseason just as surely as '24. The 95-win team DD built last year was still his best team.

And you can't say he rearranged the deck chairs for three off-seasons. He signed Turner and Walker and Kimbrel and Strahm and acquired Soto in off-season 1 (we may not like any of those moves but for Strahm, but they were aggressive moves, and it's not like Turner is bad) and he re-signed Nola and extended Wheeler in Off-season Two (those aren't deck chairs, those are the whole boat).

Sure, I don't love that they are stuck with Casty and Walker's $ and didn't want to bust the last cap threshold but I'm also pretty glad they didn't sign Profar or Bregman or trade for Tucker.

I hear you on the Dodgers but they are better-run, better-owned, richer and had a 20-year foundation of homegrown talent and success to build from. The Phillies had to take shortcuts to get from the Amaro/Klentak years to here. And The Dodgers could still lose in the NLDS again this year just like they did in '22 and '23.

Of course the Harper era is a failure if they don't win. How they actually make the Harper era last past this season is really the next big question.

We were 5th in runs scored last year and added Kepler. He seems better than Hays although they are a little too left-handed.

I just don't see how running it back is "rearranging the deck chairs". And they improved the rotation though perhaps at the expense of the bullpen.

Sometimes a GM should not do radical things. I am sure we would have made room for Soto and clearly wanted Sasaki. I am just NOT sure I would have traded their best prospects for much else given that what we had was already pretty good. I am realistic enough to say we should not spend $400 million. Spending money is not our problem. I am critical with the GM when warranted (I was not a fan generally of Wade, Amaro, and especially Klentak). But DD seems to know what he is doing.

You mean Soto of course. And they also took their shot at Yamamoto and Ohtani, however futile.

And if they could have traded Bohm, we'd probably be watching Tucker or Bregman, maybe both. The fact that they were actively shopping him (even Bryce says so) and would have also surely traded Marsh in the right deal doesn't shout "stasis" to me. And Painter, Crawford and Miller are still here (which they wouldn't be if they'd gotten Tucker, not all of them anyway).

DD spent a ton of money in recent years on stars and not-really-stars, or stars who are now approaching no longer being stars. He has spent his budget. There was no budget for a position player better than Kepler. The Phillies have added so many high-priced players that the supporting cast must be inexpensive. It is by far best if the are young, plus players, from own system, Rule 5, or waiver wire who are good and cheap. Our homegrown are at least a year away, as far as position players go. What good does publicly admitting mistakes possibly do? The expensive mistakes will remain here, because nobody else wants them, unless we send so much money with them that we won't really have added $ to upgrade until soe bad contracts are behind us. I'm notat all what, specifically you would havr had DD do this past offseason,

Playoffs are always a crapshoot. That's why we don't celebrate our World Series title from 2011.

If you look at the 1976-83 era, the Pythagorean W/L record rankings match the chronology, 1976 the best of the bunch, 1983 the worst.

1976 (swept in NLCS) .644 (better than the Reds that year, by the way)
1977 (lost 3-1 in NLCS) .607 (actually worse than LA)
1978 (lost 3-1 in NLCS) .586 (again, worse than LA)
1980 (Champs!) .559 (not as good as the KC Royals)
1983 (NL Champs) .542 (yet again, worse than LA, and worse than Baltimore)

Then look at the other championship era, not a match for the chronology this time:

2011 (lost in 1st round) .633 (much better than StL)
2010 (lost in NLCS) .585 (a smidge higher than SF)
2008 (Champs!) .573 (higher than all the teams they beat, not as good as Boston that year though)
2009 (NL Champs) .566 (worse than LA and NYY)
2007 (lost in 1st round) .538 (worse than COL)

And the current era, this one goes from best to least best in reverse chronological order.

2024 (lost in 1st round) .571 (better than the NYM)
2023 (lost in NLCS) .549 (far better than AZ)
2022 (NL Champs) .540 (worse than all the teams they played in postseason except SD)

(just for fun, the 1993 pythagW/L for that NL Championship team would fit in between 1978 and 1980 on the first list, between 2010 and 2008 on the Utley era list, and between 2024 and 2023 on the current list).

And baseball is also funny, isn't it? While '08 and '80 are the high points that they should be, the '07 team making the playoffs at the Mets expense is probably my second favorite part of that era (more than '09 which really just repeated '08 w/o the happy ending), and the current group's dominance of the Braves for two straight Octobers was just as thrilling as the joy and pain of the accompanying two NLCS runs.

Last year really was the equivalent of the Cardinals 2011 series. Except unlike then, there's more to come. This not a team of Marlon Byrds and Ben Reveres and AJ Burnetts and Delmon Young Jrs. (I know I am conflating years now but you get the point).

You need to just not watch until the Phillies get to the bullpen. It will help with the anxiety.

it's not even hittin' season yet!