The numbers don't lie

[Philsmania]

Beginning with July 12, the first game of the Oakland series right before the break, the Phillies went 34-35 with a -10 run differential. That's not a good team.

[fish]

Part of the season dialog that got lost was the expectation that they should run through the first 2 months of a weaker schedule. Then all of the sudden a run of better teams with better pitching played them exactly like the dbacks did with the same results.

[phillychuck]

Anyone can win a short series. With so many teams in the playoffs now, the winner is often just the team that gets the bounces or stays healthiest. Or both. I'm afraid there really isn't a greater significance. We didn't get the breaks this year, and the Mets did.

[Austinfan]

It wasn't about breaks, it was about performing. The hitting and bullpen were bottom dweller quality.

Stott and Marsh are the biggest disappointments, both took a step back.
Bohm's limitations were exposed, just lacks the discipline, when the league figured him out the second half, he couldn't adjust.
Rojas failed to improve.
Hays was a worthless pickup, another Dombrowski free swinger.

Harper, Turner, Castellanos, Schwarber, Realmuto are not going to improve the next few years.
If they have to carry this team going forward, look for a steady decline.

Hoffman and Estavez both came up short, do you pay them?

This team is aging out, do you try to patch it or take a step backwards in 2025 to reload for the next generation.

[Philsmania]

This team is aging out, do you try to patch it or take a step backwards in 2025 to reload for the next generation.

Tough question. Middleton is a damanding owner whom I don't see admitting to doing a rebuild. Harper and Turner will be Phillies until the oldest Millennials are celebrating their 50th birthdays and their Generation Alpha kids are in their junior years of college. Estevez was kind of a flop too so I would not want to see the Phillies get into a bidding war to keep him. Between O'Hoppe and Klassen and Aldegheri, the Angels' GM or POBO has quite the knack for picking Dombrowski's pocket. Was Hoffman's bad October a blip, the product overwork or the beginning of a serious regression to mean or just being typically up and down like relievers can be? Strahm is under contract for another year but the question applies to him as well.

I tend to think they patch. I doubt they pursue Soto, however.

[VoteForKalas]

Anyone can win a short series. With so many teams in the playoffs now, the winner is often just the team that gets the bounces or stays healthiest. Or both. I'm afraid there really isn't a greater significance. We didn't get the breaks this year, and the Mets did.

As the original post showed, this was way more than a short series unfortunately. 70 games is almost half the season.

I also reject the "we did not get the breaks" take which is so defeatist and makes it seem like nothing can be done and the game is all luck which is false. The Phillies earned what they got, good and bad.

The Phillies have done worse in the playoffs each season since the 2022 WS run. Just like the last winning era of Phillies baseball from 2008-11.

That time, we had zero answers, denied reality, held onto the core too long and wasted away in the desert of lost opportunities and bad plans for nearly 10 years.

As Roseman said, "hope is not a strategy". DD better have a well defined plan ready based on understanding the real issues hampering this team and feasible actions to take to fix it.

[Austinfan]

To be fair, they have improved the scouting and player developement, and Dombrowski hasn't traded away a lot of assets, this summer Bergolla was the only major prospect, the two pitching prospects were replaced by what may be better prospects.

So we're not looking at the wasteland after 2011 when they missed on 1st rd picks, totally whiffed in LA and went into a downward spiral.

This is more like a couple years of treading water until players like Painter, Crawford, Miller et al. arrive.

[Philsmania]

To be fair, they have improved the scouting and player developement, and Dombrowski hasn't traded away a lot of assets, this summer Bergolla was the only major prospect, the two pitching prospects were replaced by what may be better prospects.

So we're not looking at the wasteland after 2011 when they missed on 1st rd picks, totally whiffed in LA and went into a downward spiral.

This is more like a couple years of treading water until players like Painter, Crawford, Miller et al. arrive.

Improving the scoiuting and development, all while having winning teams resulting in lesser draft position is probably Dombrowski's biggest accomplishment with the Phillies. Ironically, he's probably done better at that than completing the ML roster in 2023 & 2024 when many of his moves, epecially those at the stretch drive, flopped. Hiring Mattingly looks like a masterstroke.

[zambonir]

As the original post showed, this was way more than a short series unfortunately. 70 games is almost half the season.

Yeah but it was not a bad team over those 70 games. Just not a great one, nor one nearly as good as the first-half team. But not really that much worse than the '22 or '23 teams. The line between a .475 team of losers and a .525 team that actually still makes the playoffs and succeeds in this day and age is pretty fine (though the Mets wound up with a much better record than Arizona or Miami last year). For the Phillies I think the difference was Ranger and Bohm tailing off in the second half, more than the overall flaws. Not that those flaws aren't real. I think there will be some changes.

The 2012 and 2013 teams might have actually succeeded if there'd been no financial constraints and a better GM. Betting on the likes of Juan Pierre and Ben Revere and Michael Young and Delmon Young Jr. were a lethal combination of cheapness and bad judgment. This team has somewhat better judgment (though the jury is still out based on some of the trade deadline moves) and the money for one big move.

[Philsmania]

As the original post showed, this was way more than a short series unfortunately. 70 games is almost half the season.

Yeah but it was not a bad team over those 70 games.

The 2012 and 2013 teams might have actually succeeded if there'd been no financial constraints and a better GM. Betting on the likes of Juan Pierre and Ben Revere and Michael Young and Delmon Young Jr. were a lethal combination of cheapness and bad judgment. This team has somewhat better judgment (though the jury is still out based on some of the trade deadline moves) and the money for one big move.

With regard to the first point, again, the Phillies had a -10 run differential over those last 69 games. Using a pythagorean calculator I found online, that's a .485 winning percentage or 33 wins, so I guess they were lucky by one game (should have been 33-36).

WIth regard to the second, an interesting "what if?".. The Nationals were ascendant at that point and the Braves a spurt with good but not great teams (guys like the Upton brothers and Kimbrel before they decided to blow it up and rebuld around the same time the Phillies faced the music). Maybe we would have wrung a wild card out of one of those seasons, maybe not.

[zambonir]

With regard to the first point, again, the Phillies had a -10 run differential over those last 69 games. What does pythagorian formula calculate that into? I would not be surprised if they were actually worse than 34-35.

That's just not a very big number, even if it says they might have lost another game or two per XW-L.

And they were actually 33-33 in the second half, with a +3 RD (your choice of the A's series as the dividing line is completely random especially if you remember who pitched in that series and that they had just swept the Dodgers.

If you want to go from July 1 on they were 40-38. That's also slightly less than an exact half-season (versus the All-Star break where the second half is shorter).

They also had a .577 WP in September. And, if we're gonna cherry-pick, a .606 WP from the first win in Kansas City, which felt like when they ended the August slump.

[Austinfan]

Part of the bad finish was the black hole that was the 5th starter, even a mediocre (5.00 ERA) gets them to 100 wins.

But part was the limitations of this team, it's built more for the regular season than the post-season.

They lack a RP with a closer's mentality. It's nice to have a good regular season ERA, but certain RPs just have "it," and pitch better with the game on the line.

The hitters feasted on mistakes, but in the post-season you face better pitching staffs, watching opposing hitters work counts and force mistakes exposed the flaws of this lineup. Too many Phillies hitters, both last year and this year, want to play "hero" ball instead of running up pitch counts and getting on base (or moving runners over) for the next hitter.

[andyb]

Part of the bad finish was the black hole that was the 5th starter, even a mediocre (5.00 ERA) gets them to 100 wins.

And our division lead really meant we did not have to address that problem. We also had some injuries like Bohm in the second half.

I just see this as a pretty good team that fell short in a small sample of games. The big issue is we did not hit that well, especially in the back end of the lineup. But it was 4 games and we should not overreact to that.

[zambonir]

But part was the limitations of this team, it's built more for the regular season than the post-season.

Which is ironic because the opposite was said about the '22 team, and even the '23 team until midway through the DBacks series.

And our division lead really meant we did not have to address that problem. We also had some injuries like Bohm in the second half.

Bohm was only out from 9/3 to 9/15. He obviously wasn't the same after but the Phillies played fine without him. His overall second half was the bigger issue. And Turner also struggled a fair amount (possibly also due to his injury even tho the team weathered that well at the time).

[andyb]

Bohm was only out from 9/3 to 9/15. He obviously wasn't the same after but the Phillies played fine without him. His overall second half was the bigger issue.

Bohm last played 8/29. Was out till 9/15 as you say, though he had a .502 OPS the rest of the way. Bohm clearly was hurt and never got his timing back. He was bad in the field too when he came back. It was a major loss to take an 800 OPS bat out of the lineup. Not sure why you are trying to minimize that. Everyone else like Turner and Realmuto were mostly healthy. They just did not hit in October. It is always lots of factors, but when you get less than nothing out of an all star like Bohm (less because he was sub replacement level when he played) it is just a huge factor and we are really talking a 6 week stretch starting at the end of August.

[Austinfan]

Problem is they didn't hit in 2023 either.
And the eyeball test says it wasn't bad luck, they weren't having good PAs for the most part.

[andyb]

Problem is they didn't hit in 2023 either.

In 2 games!!!!

It is not really a huge problem. Are there opportunities for improvement? Sure. But it is generally a good offense.

[zambonir]

But he wasn't anything like an 800 OPS bat for a month before he was out. He was also .648 in May, though he admittedly did a good job of adjusting out that. I just reckon he is ultimately a 110 OPS+ bat with neutral to negative defense (DRS still hates him) not the guy who helped carry the team. Less concerned with what went wrong than what kind of bat he is for the offense going forward. The flaws in his game both as a hitter and mentally still seem manifold

[zambonir]

Agreed it is still generally a good offense. It could just use either one more dangerous hitter or 1-2 more solid hitters with different approaches to make it a more balanced offense. Stott could still be one of the latter. Marsh kinda flunked his chance to be either though he's still a great fielder and LHB.

There was a lot more bad luck than we tend to think in this series too. Balls were getting hit hard. The ABs didn't always stink. But clearly it began to feed on itself in terms of jumping on the first early strikes

[andyb]

But he wasn't anything like an 800 OPS bat for a month before he was out.

But he was. He had an 804 OPS when he went out. You are kind of the king of cherry picking small sample size splits. He was above 800 in April, June, and July. Below in May and August. But you are just creating a trend where one probably does not exist in the progression of a typical season. He had low BABIPs in the two sub-par months. Smooth it all out and he was an 800 OPS bat when he went out (and a 500 OPS bat when he came back).