It’s probably hard to remember a time when the Phillies weren’t the strongest, deepest team in the NL East. But in fact, things used to be dire enough around here that their divisional rivals tried to shine a spotlight on how pathetic the Phillies were. Yet each time they’ve done so, a finger on the monkey’s paw has curled.
There’s not a lot to the Nationals right now. Their starting pitching has been decent enough to keep them in games and their offense has been indecent enough to not keep them in more of them. They’re hovering around .500, thanks in large part to the struggles of their young studs like C.J. Abrams and Luis Garcia, Jr. But as you’ll hear Nationals beat writer for the Washington Post Andrew Golden tell us in today’s episode of Hittin’ Season, they’ve got another gear they’re going to find.
Whether or not that’ll be this weekend, it’s tough to say. But probably not. The scuffling Nationals lineup just lost a series to the putrid White Sox, and they’ll be facing the Phillies’ top two starters in this three-game stretch, Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola, as well as Cristopher Sánchez. The Phillies have been a little banged-up of late, but J.T. Realmuto is back in the lineup, Alec Bohm has survived numerous HBPs, and even Trea Turner is looking more agile than it was originally predicted at this point in his hamstring recovery.
There’s just Taijuan Walker at the moment, who took a comebacker from Starling Marte off the toe in the final game of four against the Mets on Wednesday. He’s got a contusion and his next start is up in the air… but fortunately, the Phillies have a guy for that in Spencer Turnbull, whose role has been constantly questioned since Walker returned to the rotation in late April. Well, question no more, because Turnbull has been feeding off one and two-inning appearances where he can get them and should be ready to step into a start if the Phillies need him.
So really, once again, everything is fine. Walker’s injury doesn’t appear to be life-threatening and the Phillies, despite losing to the Mets, don’t appear to be losing any of their pre-established dominance. That doesn’t mean people can’t find problems—Wheeler’s throwing a lot of deep counts, there’s not any long-term catching depth behind Realmuto should the unthinkable happen, and boy, nobody wants to see Whit Merrifield come up with runners in scoring position anymore. But the NL East-leading team with one of the best rotations, most productive offenses, and highest win totals in baseball should be able to enjoy the weekend against a mediocre-at-best Nationals club.
It wasn’t too long ago that the Phillies’ last opponent, the Mets, drew a line in the sand, much like Bryce Harper used to do sarcastically to umpires with terrible vision. New York TV commentator Keith Hernandez famously said in August 2022 that he hated doing Phillies games because “as far as fundamentally and defensively, the Phillies have always been just not up to it.”
At the time—August 10, 2022—the Mets were leading the NL East with a 73-39 record, and the Phillies were ten games behind them in third at 62-48. The Phillies’ defense had been presumed to be awful, because it hadn’t been the focus of their roster strength when they’d brought in Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos to homer the crap out of the competition with Bryce Harper, Rhys Hoskins, and J.T. Realmuto.
Well, long story short, the Phillies went onto the World Series that season and the Mets crawled back into the sewers and were eliminated from the postseason in three games in which they hit .185 as a team. Their $445 million roster was dragged expensively through one of the worst implosions in baseball history, ensuring that now when you do a search for “Mets collapse” you really need to specify which one to get the deserted results.
Since that fateful day in the Mets’ broadcasting booth, when Keith Hernandez individually brought about another hilariously poor end for the Metropolitans, the Mets have hit .217 against Phillies pitching (this year they’ve hit .200 against the Phillies with 32 SO and 11 BB) and their pitchers have a 3.51 ERA. The Phillies ERA vs. the Mets is actually worse at 3.78 and they’ve only hit .244 against them.
And yet… there is absolutely no argument which team has had the better last couple of years, while sure, we’re all sick of watching the Phillies play through a debilitating mist, whoop-se-daisy fly balls off their gloves, or get caught in an inning-ending rundown, they can’t be too fundamentally flawed because they keep going back to the NLCS.
And the Mets aren’t the only team to draw a line and stick their tongues out at the Phillies. The Phillies’ opponent this weekend will be the Washington Nationals, who aren’t up to much in the standings at the moment as they push through another rebuild, having let a generation of the game’s best players walk out their door (in multiple cases, only to see those players like Bryce Harper and Trea Turner thrive with the Phillies).
It was August 25, 2020 when this innocent little tweet popped out of an internet tube. Obviously, Phillies fans trapped in their homes and bunkers had little to do but demand satisfaction. Not only was the tweet wrong about Philadelphians defending the Phillies at the time (the 2020 Phillies bullpen was a disaster to which a FEMA response would have been warranted), but it also proved to be the beginning of the end of what the Nationals had considered their greatest success.
Since the Nats’ now infamous tweet, the Phillies have hit .277 against Washington with 123 home runs. The Phillies and Nationals have played 64 games against each other in that span and the Phillies’ next loss to the Nationals will only be their 20th in that span. They are 45-19 against them, including three separate four-game sweeps. The Nationals and Mets are a collective 1-2 in the postseason since 2020.
So, things are looking pretty good for the Phillies this weekend. Every time an NL East rival announces how bad the Phillies are, they pay for it with their dignity over the course of several years. So you have to think, with all the sour-pussed Braves fans out their whinging over the Phillies’ schedule, they’d have learned their lesson. I guess they’ll just get their next one in the NLDS.
