The Phillies are who we (should have) thought they were
So far this season, they sure look a lot like the same team they’ve always been. They score runs in bunches and they don’t score them that way, too.
The best thing about spring training is that it gives you a month and a half to pretend that things aren’t exactly as they seem.
You spend three months breathing recycled air and eating dinner in the dark and watching the Sixers and then, boom, spring arrives. That first dose of Vitamin D hits like a whippet under the high school bleachers. The grass is green. The days are long. Everything looks better than it has ever looked before.
Even Dave Dombrowski’s offseason.
So, yeah, I get it. The Phillies entered Tuesday’s game one game above .500 and had scored 10 runs in five games while guys like Tyler Fitzgerald treat Citizens Bank Park like Barry Bonds did the Vet. Through 16 games, they had been the exception among last year’s four NLDS participants. The Dodgers (12-6), Mets (11-5), and Padres (14-3) are all on pace to win at least 108 games. There is one team in Pennsylvania that is happy with 9-7, and that’s the Steelers.
All of which has raised a question more perennial than a pollen-coated windshield:
Is it time to panic about the Phillies?
As with everything, the answer depends on semantics. It’s not so much your definition of the word “panic.” Rather, it’s how you define the Phillies.
Who did we think they were?
Sixteen games into the 2025 season, they sure look a lot like the same team they’ve always been. They score runs in bunches and they don’t score them that way, too. They clobber Tyler Glasnow and then make Andre Pallante look like Dizzy Dean. Their new closer lasted one day on the job. Ranger Suárez is hurt. I know all of this may be difficult to process. I hope you were sitting down.
» READ MORE: ‘Phillies Extra’ Q&A: Jesús Luzardo on why every strikeout costs $100, his supportive parents, and more
The real question isn’t whether you should panic about the Phillies.
It’s: “What were you expecting?”
A year ago, the Phillies opened the season by losing four of six at home to the Braves and Reds. They were 8-8 on April 15. Five times, they failed to score three runs.
Two months later, we were wondering if they might win 110 games.
The answer now is the same as it was then: No, they probably won’t.
My apologies in advance to whoever needed to hear that.
Look, there is a path to 100 wins. There is a path to best-in-the-majors contention. There is a path to a regular season that allows its fans to bask rather than to suffer, that does not require Tom McCarthy to read off a long list of potential side effects at 1.5x speed before every broadcast.
The good news is that the path has been partially blazed. Jesús Luzardo looks a lot like the guy who started Game 1 of the 2023 wild-card series against Zack Wheeler at Citizens Bank Park. José Alvarado looks a lot like the guy who was Weapon X that season. Both are two huge developments, provided they sustain.
The lineup is another story. The offseason narrative was always more string theory than actual science. Is there a hypothetical world where Bryson Stott starts driving fastballs while Brandon Marsh and Alec Bohm do everything they’ve always done except with different results? Is there a world where Trea Turner turns back into the hitter he was five years ago and J.T. Realmuto reverses the aging curve? Sure, but it is only slightly more probable than the world where Johan Rojas gets a hit with men on base.
Leopards don’t change their spots and babies don’t change their diapers and when they try, you get the Phillies. Dombrowski knew all of this when he was handed his budget and understood its limitations. The only option was to run it back, make a few upside plays, and add a starter like Luzardo who might make a difference in a postseason series.
The Phillies are who they’ve always been. They are a very good team that will win a lot of its games when somebody gets hot besides Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber. That’s what we’ve seen so far. They have a minus-27 run differential in their seven losses and a plus-28 run differential in their nine wins.
Imperfection has its symmetries.
If we expected anything more, that’s on us. The Phillies are exactly what they looked like they would be on paper at the start of the whole shebang. Is it alarming to learn there are no magic beans? That hope is not a strategy? Maybe. But that’s life. Better learn how to swaddle.
» READ MORE: Boom, bust or both? Dave Dombrowski’s offseason bullpen math is Phillies’ biggest question in 2025
Rob Thomson doesn’t have the luxury of seeing things how they are. He has no other option but to walk the thin line between patience and self-delusion.
“These guys have to remember, we’re 15 games in here,” Thomson said on Monday afternoon as he sat in the Phillies dugout. “There are 70 guys hitting under .200 in Major League Baseball. They just need to relax. It’s going to happen. We’ve got a long way to go.”
The rest of us know exactly what we’ve seen out of the Phillies over these first couple of weeks. Hope is the only path forward for a baseball manager in April. Unfortunately, he is going to have to walk it alone.