Making sense of the Phillies: Are they a great team after all? Or just beating bad teams?
The Phillies are 19-3 against losing teams after seven straight wins over the woeful Pirates and Rockies. How much does it matter?
Baseball has never seen a team as bad as the 2025 Rockies. That’s a remarkable thing to say when you consider that baseball just saw the 2024 White Sox last season. But the Rockies have earned it. They are forcing a national reconsideration of what we mean when we label a team historically bad.
For most of last season, it was generally accepted that the White Sox were a historically bad team. Technically, it was true. The White Sox made history. No other team had lost 121 games in a season in the live ball era. The White Sox did. They became the Neil Armstrongs of bad baseball.
And now the Rockies are going to Mars.
After losing three straight games to the Phillies, Colorado entered Thursday’s series finale at Coors Field on pace to finish the season with a whopping 27 wins. That would leave them a full 14 games worse than last year’s White Sox. Keep in mind, Chicago was only one game worse than the 1962 Mets, who were the Sputniks of big league loss exploration.
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It took 30 years for the big league record to go from 111 losses (1932 Boston Red Sox) to 120 losses (‘62 Mets). To jump from 121 to 135 in one season would rewrite everything we know. In theory, there should be a lower mathematical bound on the number of games a team can lose in a season. We appeared to be converging on it. Turns out, we weren’t.
Draw your lessons accordingly.
Long story short, this was one of those series where you should resist the urge to twist yourself into a knot chasing some glimmer of meaning. Sure, you can take some comfort in knowing that the Phillies did what a good team is supposed to do in sweeping the Rockies. In reality, they did what every team does.
The Phillies are a good team. No doubt about that. But we’ve seen nothing to suggest that they are a great team, which is what they will need to be in order to maintain their current 103-win pace and remain the National League’s top playoff seed. It’s what they will need to be to beat the Mets and the Braves. With Atlanta coming to town on Tuesday, now doesn’t feel like the right time for a victory lap.
Being a good team is important. The Phillies are 19-3 against losing teams after winning seven straight against the Rockies and Pirates. That’s the kind of pace that can keep a team from sweating out September. Dominate the bad teams and play the rest close to even. That’s the formula to qualify for the postseason. The Phillies have reached a point where you will expect them to handle their business against the Athletics in Sacramento starting Friday night.
But then come the Braves on Tuesday.
Including that three-game series, the Phillies have 20 games left against Atlanta and the Mets. They also have a combined 12 games against the Tigers, Yankees, Dodgers and Cubs, who sit with them atop the MLB standings. They have another 18 against the Mariners, Twins, Royals, Giants, and Padres all of whom entered Thursday with a .540-plus winning percentage.
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That adds up to 50 games remaining against the teams who are currently in playoff position plus the Braves. Conversely, the Phillies have 25 left against the majors’ dregs, which we’ll define as the Marlins and Nationals plus the Athletics, Pirates, and White Sox. You can include the 16-32 Orioles if you want. I’ll credit them with past performance.
Winning 20 of 25 against the losers would give the Phillies 52 victories. To reach 100, they’d need to go 48-39 in the other 87 games. Of those games, 65 are against teams who entered Thursday .500 or better. The Phillies are 13-15 against such teams thus far. We ain’t seen nothing yet.
Hey, credit where it is due. The Phillies are 32-18, the best record in the National League and the second-best in the majors. They have taken series from the Dodgers and Cubs, two of the four teams directly behind them. But they need to show a lot more before they’ll remain atop the NL all summer.
They need to show their bullpen can survive without José Alvarado.
The Phillies are 9-3 in games decided by one run. What would that record be if Alvarado didn’t pitch in any of them? Orion Kerkering to Matt Strahm to Jordan Romano was effective on Thursday. Two of the three have a lot to prove. The one who doesn’t is having some velocity issues.
They need to show they can hit an above-average lefty starter.
They are 6-7 in games started by southpaws, but three of those wins were against the Rockies, two against Kyle Freeland. The other three wins were against the Pirates and the Nationals. Can they beat the Matthew Liberatores of the world? In two tries against the Cardinals southpaw, they have two runs in 11⅓ innings.
They need a third big bat to emerge behind Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber.
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Trea Turner’s .358 OBP looks really nice, but he still isn’t consistently driving the ball like you’d expect out of a $300 million player. The Mets have Pete Alonso to go with Francisco Lindor and Juan Soto. The Dodgers have five hitters with a 150 OPS+ or better. None of those five is Mookie Betts, at the moment.
The Phillies have a rotation that will consistently have them in position to win games. To consistently convert on that position, they will either need a lineup that is far more balanced or a shutdown bullpen.
The Phillies were the best team in the majors at this time last season. It’s only fair to wonder if the rest of this season will play out differently.