The Phillies Are on Fire for Some Reason

When the Padres decided to sell nothing at all at the trade deadline, one of the public explanations was that the team didn’t want to give up on the playoffs. And one of the explanations for that line of thinking was that the schedule looked pretty soft, so the Padres would have a chance to rack up some much-needed wins against lesser competition. At the time, it seemed more like a fantasy. And now the Padres’ odds are somehow even longer. Their season, for all intents and purposes, is finished. For, this past weekend, they were swept at home by the Phillies.

The Phillies, who are having trouble losing. I don’t know how to gauge public awareness, but just in case you haven’t noticed, the Phillies are playing some really good baseball. I imagine a lot of people tuned out entirely once Cole Hamels went away, and the season started so poorly it wasn’t even worth acknowledging the Phillies’ record, but, as hot as the Blue Jays are at the moment, the Phillies might be no cooler. It’s the Phillies who have baseball’s best record since the All-Star break, at 16-5. You’ll recall it was the Phillies who had baseball’s worst record at the All-Star break, at 29-62. A 52-win pace became a 123-win pace, and while we can still say with a high degree of certainty that the Phillies as presently built are not good, this is the sort of run that has to be talked about. Three or so weeks of the Phillies winning more than anyone else. For those three weeks, I can offer three thoughts.

The roster isn’t a barren wasteland

No roster, no matter how bad, is completely barren, and the Phillies have active pieces of their own. And I don’t just mean players who can make contributions now — there are some guys you can envision being around the next time the Phillies are actually worth a damn. The farm system got stronger after the deadline passed, and much of the young talent hasn’t yet gotten big-league experience, but we’ve been able to see, say, Aaron Nola. He hasn’t given anything back in 2015, and to this point in his brief major-league career, he’s looked like the No. 2 or No. 3 starter he’s been projected as. He’s moved quickly, and he’s deserved it.

You don’t need to be sold on Ken Giles, but Giles is still good. Maikel Franco has looked like the opposite of what he looked like in his first cup of coffee, and now it can be factually stated that he’s a 22-year-old running a 123 wRC+ over regular at-bats. As this season has gone on, he’s only walked more and more. Maybe you can see some upside in Cesar Hernandez. I’ve become more interested in Odubel Herrera. Herrera was a Rule 5 selection, which means no one really gave him much of a chance to turn into anything, but to this point he’s held his own as a regular center fielder, running average offense as a 23-year-old who’d never seen Triple-A.

For sure, he could stand to walk more. For sure, he could stand to strike out less. For sure, he could look more comfortable in the middle of the outfield. But Herrera’s done what he’s done despite his old team figuring he wasn’t ready for advanced competition, and a 107 wRC+ after 350 trips to the plate can’t be a complete fluke. In fact, it looks like Herrera has unlocked some ability most people didn’t see. He’s hitting more balls in the air than he did in the minors, and Herrera already has six big-league home runs. His season high in the minors was five. It looks like the power came along when Herrera participated in winter ball, and his top Statcast exit velocity is 110mph. That’s even with Franco. That’s also even with one Kris Bryant. Not that Herrera has Bryant power, but he’s hit some no-doubters, as a guy who looked like a slap hitter. So his ceiling has gotten higher.

That was a lot about Odubel Herrera. He’s just one guy, and he’s not yet a star or anything. But he’s a positive development for a team that needed positive developments. Herrera could be an everyday outfielder. That would be one more piece the Phillies don’t have to find.

Sometimes baseball is a caricature of itself

A few years ago I worked at SB Nation, and alongside Grant Brisbee and Rob Neyer I was a part of the Baseball Nation site. Rob was in charge, and while he usually extended to Grant and me great freedom, there was this one rule, where Rob wanted us to stay away from “baseball is weird” as a thesis. He didn’t want to see it get over-used, and he didn’t want us to use it as a crutch. There was, thus, occasional butting of heads, because Rob didn’t want us to express too often that baseball is weird, and, as it happens, very often, baseball is weird. Sometimes there is no better thesis.

This is the oldest existing baseball principle. Or maybe second-oldest, after “baseball exists.” It’s nothing new to any of you, and we can all individually think of a million examples proving the validity. A million unlikelihoods, a million improbabilities that came true on a baseball field. Baseball will surprise you. It’s baseball’s most prominent unsurprising quality. The deeper you get into it, the less it makes sense, which makes you want to get deeper still, which only makes things sillier. Baseball’s weird. This is a baseball analysis website. We’re constantly wrong. Please don’t stop reading us.

Baseball’s weird. Baseball’s weird. It doesn’t make sense, because it doesn’t have to. Since the All-Star break, the Phillies have the best record in baseball. During that stretch, they traded away their closer, and their best starting pitcher. Just prior to the stretch, the Phillies were a disaster, and the misery in large part caused their manager to resign. I’m not sure if this is the greatest possible proof that baseball is unpredictable, but it’s the greatest current proof, anyway. The Phillies have posted the best record in baseball. Anything can happen. Any team can win the World Series. Certainly, any team in playoff contention. There’s no such thing as needs, and there’s no such thing as guarantees. It seems like, based on their resources, the Dodgers should be a juggernaut for the whole of the foreseeable future. Except that, baseball. Who knows? If the Phillies can do this, any team can do anything for three weeks. If a team can do anything for three weeks, it can do anything for four weeks. What’s the significance? Doesn’t have to be anything. This is why you don’t want to read too much into things. Sometimes a hot streak is just the Phillies going 16-5. The Phillies are bad. Neither the badness nor the record can be argued. So, then what?

(Please don’t stop reading us.)

Winning is more fun than tanking

As a side effect of all this success, the Phillies have actually passed another team in the standings. It seemed impossible only a month ago, but the Phillies today have a better record than the Marlins do. Which means, as things stand, the Phillies are no longer positioned to gain the first overall draft pick. Maybe that’s something to be lamented, but this seems better to me.

Tanking, I think, is a principle of greater popularity in other sports, but people do talk about it in baseball terms. If things are going poorly, they might as well go the most poorly, so the team can get the best pick possible. There are issues with this, though. Most obviously, top baseball draft picks aren’t quite like top draft picks in other sports. The probabilities are a lot lower. The immediacy generally isn’t there. More often than not, you can’t save a franchise with the guy picked first. The second pick is good. The third pick is good. The first pick is, of course, always the best one to have, but there’s so much unpredictability the extra value is limited. In few cases is the guy taken first far and away the best player available.

Then, think about what tanking involves. Tanking requires consistent losing. Winning comes along with good performances. Losing comes along with bad performances. If a team loses a lot, the players on the team are doing poorly. That includes veterans, and that includes young potential up-and-comers. If the Phillies were to lose a bunch and end up with baseball’s worst record, odds are, that would mean worse performances from guys like Nola and Franco and Herrera. And that would give them worse projections. If the Phillies were to stay hot, though, then the young players probably would’ve done pretty well, so that strengthens the Phillies’ future position. The draft pick gets worse, but the players already in house look better, and that’s at least as important. The worst a team does, the worse its players do, and that’s bad for the short-term and the long-term.

The ideal, perhaps, would be young players succeeding, and veterans slumping, and the team losing while players develop at the same time. At least, that would be the ideal way to tank, but it’s unrealistic. And in closing, there’s this final thing.

Winning is fun! Even winning mostly pointless games is fun. It just makes the whole baseball experience feel more worthwhile. Maybe you believe in the value of establishing a winning culture, and maybe you don’t, but when you’re watching a bad team, and the bad team wins, it’s fun to watch the young players get along, and imagine them celebrating down the road, when they’re playing for something more substantial. Winning creates a better atmosphere, and from an outsider’s perspective, winning just elevates the mood. The Phillies aren’t good. They’re a hell of a lot more satisfying now than they were a month or two ago.

Take away from it what you want. Since the All-Star break, no one in baseball has a better record than the Philadelphia Phillies. From one perspective, the significance of the run is minimal. From another, this is everything that baseball is. This is baseball enlightenment — to truly understand the game is to understand that you’ll never fully understand it. Everything we try to do out here, we do for our own amusement.