After winning three out of four against the Braves in pulse-pounding fashion over the weekend, the Phillies enter the season’s final month of the season in phenomenal shape to win their first NL East title since 2011.
They’re up seven games on Atlanta with 25 to play entering Tuesday night’s two-game series in Toronto against the Blue Jays. If the Phils play one game under .500 the rest of the way, the Braves would have to go 19-6 to catch them. Barring a complete and utter collapse by the Phils here in September, the Phillies are going to win the NL East.
Nevertheless, there is still a lot to play for here over the final month of the season.
The race for a wild-card-round bye
Now, the race is on to capture one of the two first-round byes in the postseason. Entering Tuesday, the Phils are still 1½ games behind the Dodgers for the best record in the National League, although, if the two teams are tied at the end of the season, the Phils would earn the higher seed by virtue of winning five of six against LA this year. They’re a ½-game ahead of the Milwaukee Brewers for the No. 2 seed.
The National League is so even this year that the difference between the so-called “best” teams and whichever team enters the playoffs as the No. 6 seed has never been smaller. In previous seasons, the Phils swept both wild card rounds against the Cardinals and Marlins. It’s tempting fate to believe you can do it year-in and year-out, but any team can lose a three-game series to any team at any time.
So finishing with one of the top two records in the National League is going to be really important.
Strength of schedule
After a brutal August schedule saw them play just two teams without winning records – the Marlins and Nationals – things lighten up a bit in the season’s final month.
According to Tankathon, the Phillies have the 19th-most-difficult schedule the rest of the way. This week they play two teams on the road that are out of the playoff picture, the Blue Jays and Marlins. A 4-2 week is the bare minimum for the Phils. They play seven games against the Mets (three at home and four in New York), pivotal games for both teams as New York tries to overtake the Braves for the final wild card spot. The Phils will also play the other team trying to hunt down Atlanta, the Cubs, for three at home.
The most pivotal series of September might be a three-game set in Milwaukee Sept. 16-18, a series that will likely determine which of the two teams earns a wild-card-round bye. The Phils swept a three-game series against the Brew Crew at home back in June, with all three games decided by one or two runs.
Los Angeles has the third-easiest schedule the rest of the way, Milwaukee’s is ninth-hardest.
Health of Harper and Schwarber’s schlump
MLB.com’s Todd Zolecki reported last weekend that Bryce Harper is dealing with soreness in his elbow and wrist, and that it is affecting him at the plate.
Harper’s been hitting better of late, but the power outage has been notable.
Kyle Schwarber is in one of the worst ruts of his career. On August 8. he was hitting .263 with a .393 on-base percentage and a .506 slugging percentage. Since then, he’s hit .141/.245/.217 and now has just a .238 batting average on the season. His only home run in that span was the season-saving grand slam against the Marlins two weeks ago.
The Phillies need these two guys to get hot over the final month before October hits.
Getting hot at the right time
When only two or four teams made the playoffs, pre-1994, playing well over a 162-game schedule was the most important thing to ensure postseason success, because until 1985, all you had to do was win two series and seven games to win it all.
Now, with six teams in the playoffs and four total rounds of play, teams that don’t play in the wild-card round need to win 11 games (three in the divisional round, four in the league championship series and four in the World Series). It becomes 13 wins if you have to play in the best-of-three, wild-card round.
The teams that have had the most success the last two seasons under this new format are the ones who entered October the hottest. In 2022, it was the Phillies. Last year, the Diamondbacks caught fire late and rode it to the Fall Classic.
Right now, Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola are dominating. The bullpen is on fire. The bottom of the lineup is doing most of the damage. But the Phils need Cristopher Sanchez and Ranger Suarez to step up and the top three of the batting order needs to do more.
If the Phils can get the rest of the lineup hot, look out! That’s the biggest thing to watch over the season’s final month.
