Who's Ready for These Phils' First Postseason With Actual Expectations??
It's been a very fun regular season, but if the Phils don't go all the way this October, we're in a little bit of a danger zone with them -- one we already know too well as Sixers fans.
It was hard not to get a tiny bit nostalgic talking to my Met fan friends who went to the series-capping Phils-Mets game at Citi Field last Sunday. It was a tight game, with Zack Wheeler brilliant as usual on the mound -- but the Phils offense, as they've been wont to do of late, just couldn't get anything together, and a Brandon Nimmo solo shot in the bottom of the sixth to make it 2-1 ended up being the difference in the game. My friends said they'd never seen the Mets' home park so rocking for a non-playoff game, just constant jubilation and standing ovations (even for Pete Alonso, whose bags most fans seem to already be pre-packing for free agency) and impossibly good vibes for a team that still may very well miss the playoffs after an ill-timed losing streak, but who was never really supposed to be in the mix in the first place. Even watching on TV, I could tell -- short of winning the World Series, this is basically as good as it gets for a home fanbase.
That was us with the Phils not that long ago. Don't get me wrong, the Citizens Bank Park crowds still seem great -- and despite many of their best guys’ relative struggles the second half of this season, we still love the team pretty much across the board. When the playoffs start, the volume at CBP will be as deafening as it ever was. But the context will be different, and so will the feeling. After three years of this, we’re just not the We Weren't Supposed to Even Be Here team anymore -- hell, we knew from early June, when we jumped out to 26 games over .500 and the Braves were already falling apart, that we almost certainly would be here it to this October. We're supposed to be here, and we're supposed to win. And if we don't... well, we know what that's gonna feel like.
The Sixers' first playoffs with real expectations on their current run was probably the 2020-21 season. In 2018, we had hope and momentum but the team was still too young to really say they underperformed; in 2019 we had a better roster but a much tougher road; in 2020 injuries and the pandemic kinda earned us a little bit of a do-over. In 2021, we entered with the No. 1 seed, a regular season that we essentially danced through, a (largely) healthy roster and the easiest bracket path prayer could buy. We didn't necessarily have to win the championship or even make the finals that year, but there were no more moral victories to be had in the second round; anything less than a conference finals appearance was to be an abject failure. And of course, we abjectly failed: Matisse Thybulle, Kevin Huerter, Trae Young, Ben Simmons... you probably remember the gorier details. But after that, things between us and this Sixers team were clearly never gonna be the same.
This is basically where we are with the Phillies now. Well, not really -- lest we forget, the Phils actually made the World Series two years ago and the NLCS last year, already two more final four appearances than the Sixers have had total since 2001. But like our current Liberty Ballers, these Fightins have thusfar fallen short of the ultimate goal, with both of their postseason runs (and last year in particular) ending in collapse and disappointment. That was well and fine in 2022, when we were a couple regular-season Milwaukee chokejobs against the Marlins away from missing the playoffs altogether and still ended up two wins away from the Commissioner's Trophy, before bowing to an admittedly superior Astros team. It was even OK-ish in 2023, when we blew a 3-2 series lead at home to a markedly not superior Diamondbacks team, just because making it as a wild card team and still thumping the 104-win Braves in the NLDS was largely triumph enough for one October.
This year? Losing will not be OK-ish. It doesn't matter that they're not entering with the best record, and perhaps aren’t even the best team -- you could certainly argue the Dodgers should be considered the NL's frontrunners, and some folks might even take the red-hot Padres over us at this point. But after an easy breezy regular season where the Phils haven't had any real worries since well before anyone started using the phrase "Brat Summer," the playoffs are all that’s been on anyone's mind -- and with the team entering the postseason with their strongest roster yet, a first-round bye and no truly dominant rivals in the picture, it's basically championship or bust for the Fightins. Anything less will be viewed as an underperformance, and the start of serious talk about this team core not having what it takes to Win the Big One.
And that's a tough spot for any team to be in -- particularly in baseball, where it's important to note, the best team almost never actually wins the whole thing. The main reason the Sixers' 2021 run was so disappointing is because in the NBA playoffs, the better team is actually supposed to win their series a good 80-90% of the time, so them not being able to finish off the friggin' Hawks was particularly galling. It hurt last year for the Phils to lose to the pretty-good Diamondbacks, especially when Arizona went on to get squashed by the Rangers in the Series -- but you couldn't really take that part of it too personally, since that shit happens all the time in baseball. The Phils were that team the year before, playing competent-enough but roundly uninspiring ball for 162 games before morphing into world-beaters in October. This year, if the Mets end up sneaking in and becoming that team, no one would be shocked; there hasn't been a team that's won the NL pennant yet this decade who's won at least 90 games in the regular season.
But Phillies fans don't wanna hear about that. We don't wanna hear anything but the sound of fireworks going off over Broad Street as Brandon Marsh and Jose Alvarado drown South Philadelphia in champagne. And maybe we will -- certainly, our chances are as good as anyone's of still playing on Halloween this year. But if not, maybe next year our bitterness about the slumping of Bryson Stott and Nick Castellanos goes from snippy to downright nasty. Maybe Aaron Nola starts getting booed when he gives up two three-run blasts in the fourth inning. Maybe we start having some of the same conversations about Bryce Harper that we've been having about Joel Embiid for years now.
I'm sure I'm coming off a little like a hater by writing this at the end of such a triumphant regular season, and I'm sorry about that. I greatly enjoyed watching this team all year -- particularly in those first couple months, but also right through that randomly clutch Kody Clemens catch on Sunday to secure win 95 in Game 162. I'm looking forward to watching them in the playoffs, and I really won't judge them that harshly even if they lose early. I'm just really not looking forward to what would come after that -- and with the baseball playoffs being what they are, I can't delude myself into thinking the Phils' chances of going all the way are that much better than any of the other seven teams in the Wild Card round. And if they do lose, we'll have officially moved on to a different phase of our relationship with the team -- the one we've been in with the Sixers for at least four seasons now -- where we not only start to dread postseason disappointment, but to expect it, too. Get ready, y'all, we could be in for our bloodiest Red October yet.
Andrew Unterberger writes for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the 'If Not, Pick Will Convey as Two Second-Rounders' section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard.
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For my life as a fan was forged by Buddy Ryan's winless-in-the-playoffs Eagles. I know know other way of being. 2008 and 2017 were odd aberrations, exceptions to the rule.