PHILADELPHIA —Through it all this season – through the injuries, through the no-hitter, through the wasted leads and remarkable recoveries, through the Trea Turner ovation, through the wild-card chase and through the Braves – Rob Thomson never lost the view of the Phillies, their moment and their time.
“We are,” the manager has said, more than once, “built for this.”
Built. Present tense. Now. This moment. This time. No rebuilding. No process. An occasional homage to the organization for delivering quality players from the farm system, but always for immediate use, not for development.
The Phillies are built for this he says, built to survive another NLCS and, they expect, to win the World Series, too. In itself, it could be considered a trite declaration. Most major-league players believe they are built to be champions, which is why they reached that point in the first place. But the Phillies, who had already rolled through two playoff series and had made a nice Game 1 down payment on another Monday, are the embodiment of the idea.
By design, they are just old enough to be desperate to win but not old enough to be bored with the chase. They are early enough in their mega-contracts to still be motivated to prove they were worth the investment, not just trying to cash in at the end. Some are young-ish – Brandon Marsh, Alec Bohm, Bryson Stott – but plenty have had meaningful postseason experience.
Dave Dombrowski put a world championship team together in Florida and another in Boston, has won five pennants and seven division championships. He did not earn presumptive Hall of Fame status because he threw money around and hoped his rotisserie team could beat somebody else’s rotisserie team.
“It’s a situation where they are really a good group,” the baseball-ops president said. “We have some really good veteran players, but we also have some good, young players, So it’s a nice complement to one another.
“I have always felt personally that the best big-league clubs that I’ve been around have a good core of veteran players who are in their prime – which our guys are – and some good, young players coming up. And so, the Marshes, the Bohms and (Johan) Rojas and (Cristopher) Sanchez and (Orion) Kerkering, all of a sudden, I think, are really important for the chemistry of our club.”
So there’s that – a well constructed roster. That explains how the Phillies won their 90 games. With that, though, is a helpful if unspoken reality, one the Phillies don’t verbalize but instead prove with their play: They have a consciousness that the opportunity they have this season is not to be wasted – that October baseball, let alone a spot in the Final Four, is anything but an entitlement.
“I try not to take anything for granted or plan on anything,” Turner was saying before Game 2 against the Diamondbacks. “You’ve kind of got to earn these situations. I’ve been fortunate enough to be on really good teams and been in the postseason quite a bit in my career, but I don’t take this for granted at all.
“I think you’ve got to earn it, and at the same time you’ve got to expect it. If you want to get here, you have to have confidence in yourself. Yeah, I haven’t made plans in October for a long time, and hopefully that’s never the case.”
Turner grabbed $300,000,000 of John Middleton’s money to join the Phillies and, an early-season slump aside, has been worth the investment. But money alone won’t yield chemistry or LCS spots. With a payroll of $235,000,000, any Phillies success will have been bought and paid for. But the Mets, Yankees and Padres had higher player costs, and the Dodgers, Angels, Blue Jays and Braves were all in for $200 million-plus, and their seasons are over.
The Phillies have to know that those operations won’t be down forever. They also know that they have spending decisions to make on pending free agents Aaron Nola and Rhys Hoskins, that Bryce Harper has a rebuilt arm, that J. T. Realmuto may have peaked as a hitter and that Zack Wheeler soon will bend into his lame-duck season.
Whatever the Phillies present next season, it will not be a copy of they have done so far in this one, and particularly in the playoffs. And whether they admit it or not, they are fortunate to be facing the NL’s fifth seed in the semifinals, as their bullpen is showing signs of stress and they already have missed one World Series chance to make the era work.
So, they play.
They take extra bases. They swing at first pitches. The celebrate every victory with an in-house smoke machine and on-field sports-drink baths. And usually, they win – they win like they have been scared straight into knowing they will never have a better chance to win a championship.
Contact Jack McCaffery at jmccaffery@delcotimes.com
Source: Berkshire mont
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