NEW YORK — The Phillies limped into the postseason Wednesday night facing many quandaries. Among them is what to make of all that transpired in 2024.
The Phillies have, in the last three years, gone from 87 wins to 90 to 95 and a National League East title. Concurrently, they’ve backslid from a World Series exit to an NLCS ouster to Wednesday’s dismissal in Game 4 of the NLDS.
That would seem to epitomize diminishing returns. It will echo, for the more traumatized of the fanbase, the four-year pattern from 2008-11, with the added step then of an actual World Championship and one less shredded Achilles tendon (sorry, Ryan Howard) now.
So perhaps detangling the signal from the noise is the first of many uncomfortable processes that await this offseason. Although manager Rob Thomson doesn’t quite see it that way.
“I don’t think so at all,” he said. “Like I said earlier, I don’t like losing a series. I want to win a World Series. But anything can happen in a short series. They pitched their offense really well. They got to our bullpen. But I don’t see us going backwards, no.”
Perhaps not backwards. But inarguably, the Phillies are not moving forward, in this postseason or writ large. That difference didn’t mean a ton in the visiting clubhouse at Citi Field Wednesday night, but it is likely to weigh on what happens going forward.
“Every loss is kind of the same,” Bryce Harper said, “anytime you lose and don’t finish the job and win the World Series. If it’s the next round or the World Series round, it all feels pretty similar.”
In the how of it, Harper is correct. Much like last year’s capitulation at home to Arizona, the same culprits can be fingered as exploited by the Mets. The offense was a no-show again, save for late in Game 2. They produced a team batting average of .186, three multi-run innings out of 36, eight runs scored in the last five playoff losses, dating to Game 6 of the 2023 NLCS. The home-field advantage of Red October seems more a marketing trope, the Phillies beaten in three of four October outings at Citizens Bank Park.
The “how” is easy. The Mets did in 2024 to the Phillies what the Phillies did in 2022 to everyone else in the National League. The playoff drought, the late clincher, the long road trip and Wild Card thriller – it’s becoming a tried-and-true formula in the expanded six-team playoffs.
“I think in ’22 we were just riding that wave,” said J.T. Realmuto, who rode an 0-for-11 splash on the rocks with three walks and an RBI against the Mets. “We were that team. We were the Mets right now that got hot at the right time and took our talent and played free. And I feel like that’s what they did to us this series, and we just weren’t able to do it.”
To the Phillies’ credit, there was no equivocating on the season as a failure. They came into the campaign talking about a World Series title or bust. They busted in spectacular fashion.
That lack of self-deception portrays what the club thinks is special about its veteran core. It’ll inform the insistence that, with three top-of-the-line starting pitchers under contract and showing no signs of decline, another postseason run is possible.
“I think we’ve got the right guys in here,” said Trea Turner, who had three singles in 15 at-bats. “Teams I’ve been on in the past that have won consistently have a core or most of the team coming back. I think you’ve seen that now here as well in the last two, three years. We’ve got pretty much the same roster. Some guys will come and go and whatnot, but I think we have what it takes in here, and we have to do what it takes to get it done next year.”
What exactly that will be is an open question. One view of the last three seasons posits everything that followed as chasing the high of 2022. In the last 24 months, the team has bolstered the bullpen, cultivated greater starting depth and, in landing Turner, fixed the one glaring positional weakness from the squad overmatched by the Astros. In absolute terms, the current roster is stronger than the one that came two wins from a world title, but the prize keeps getting more distant.
Harper endorsed the current core as capable of getting over the hump. But the most substantive way forward insisted upon in the room in the immediate aftermath was to “just get it done.”
The front office will take a more granular approach. But before that happens, there will need to be accord on a few narrative threads, analyzing whether this year’s team really was better than those of the recent past, or if this core that has dragged the Phillies many miles toward relevance can get it the final meters to the summit.
“Give them their credit, they beat us,” Nick Castellanos said. “Is there a lot of things that we could have done better? Yes. Is there things that we could have done different? Yes. Do I think that they are a better team than us? No, but (in) this series, they were.”
Contact Matt De George at [email protected]
