The biggest MLB story is the parity — and the Phillies are on the wrong side of it

People say they see no upside with this Phillies team, but I disagree. This can be a very enjoyable summer for fans if they learn how to channel their frustrations productively.

Lift some weights. Learn how to use a heavy bag. Discover the joy of jogging around the block in pajama bottoms. Your new physique will be the talk of the office in no time. When people ask you your secret, you can smile and tell them, “Jordan Romano.”

If displaced aggression isn’t your thing, I suppose crying has some health benefits too.

» READ MORE: Swing away, Phillies. Chase those dingers. Let it fly. Anything but this.

I’d like to tell you that things are going to get better, but you wouldn’t believe me if I did. Nor should you. They aren’t getting better. You know it. I know it. It doesn’t really matter if Dave Dombrowski knows it. There isn’t a whole lot that he can do.

That’s as true now as it will be three months from now. The trade deadline isn’t going to rescue the Phillies any more than it did last summer. There are several reasons for that. We’ll dive into them in a second. First, though, let’s establish who the Phillies are.

They are who they’ve always been. I wrote that a couple of weeks ago when they were three games above .500. It’s just as true now that they are, well, four games above .500. At 17-14 after losing Thursday’s series finale against the Nationals, the Phillies are on pace for 91 wins. That’s smack dab in the middle of the confidence interval they’ve inhabited for the last four years minus one magical monthlong stretch last spring. They are an above average team that makes you think they should be more than that when they get hot. That’s it.

There’s nothing wrong with that, assuming your expectations are properly calibrated. There’s a chance we end up looking back and realizing that the Phillies did a very smart thing this offseason. They knew they didn’t have the wherewithal to turn 85-95 wins into 95-105. So, rather than attempting to dominate the regular season, they attempted to put themselves in a position where they might dominate a postseason.

» READ MORE: Dave Dombrowski struck gold with Jesús Luzardo. The Phillies’ bullpen is bad enough to undermine that.

It can still work. In Jesús Luzardo, they have a starting pitcher who is just as capable of dominating a postseason game as Zack Wheeler. Add Andrew Painter to Cristopher Sánchez, Ranger Suárez, and Aaron Nola, and you have all kinds of different combinations for Games 3 and 4. The Phillies as presently constituted are a team that nobody would want to face in a postseason series. Assuming they get to the postseason, of course.

That’s a big if. This could be one of those years where a 90-plus-win team fails to make the playoffs. As of Thursday, there were four NL teams on pace for 99 wins. That didn’t include the NL Central-leading Cubs (19-13). The Phillies would have been the sixth and final playoff team … but they were also just a loss away from being out of it altogether.

That’s probably how it is going to go for the next five months. Might as well steel yourself for it. It will be entertaining. But you are going to have to work for it.

The problem is that everybody keeps waiting for them to be an order of magnitude better than the evidence suggests is reasonable.

The phase shift could have happened if Trea Turner played like he was worth $300 million. It could have happened if Brandon Marsh played like he was worth Logan O’Hoppe. It could have happened if Orion Kerkering and Romano were both who the Phillies hoped they’d be at the start of the season.

None of that happened. A trade deadline isn’t going to change it.

» READ MORE: Ranger Suárez is set to return to Phillies’ rotation, but keeps an open mind about a reliever role

Get lucky on a rental center fielder? Maybe. But anyone who still craves Luis Robert Jr. probably hasn’t looked at his batting line. It’s even worse than last year’s. In his last 545 plate appearances dating back to last season, he is hitting .213/.280/.365 for a .646 OPS. Marsh has a .714 OPS in his last 527 plate appearances.

Bullpens can always be bolstered on the trade market. But it ain’t gonna be cheap. The biggest story in baseball right now is the aforementioned parity. Two-thirds of the league entered Thursday within two games of .500. The line between buyer and seller is how much somebody else is willing to pay vs. how much you are willing to pay. The Padres parted with six of their 12 top prospects while adding to their bullpen last trade deadline.

The Phillies are going to have to make do with what they’ve got. What they’ve got is what they’ve had for two-plus years now. The story isn’t that they are still a 90-95-win team. The story is that they are losing ground.