I tend to value experiences more than I used to. I actually have felt this way for several years, as I was arriving at the dawn of my fifth decade, but that’s more true than ever after going through a near death experience. I kind of now see that youth is wasted on the young, that all of those playoff and World Series games I got to go to in the Rollins-Howard-Utley-Hamels era, like all the great concerts and other events I got to go to, they were a blessing. I took a long moment to enjoy and take in the atmosphere when I was at game three of the 2022 World Series, as I realized what a childhood dream it was when I was there in 1993 and 2008. You don’t get these experiences every day. In fact, they can be taken away from you in the course of a random Summer afternoon. You need to enjoy it while it’s here.

Saturday evening I was at the Pass & Stowe bar in Citizens Bank Park before the game and having a seat for a moment and that dawned on me again. This group of Phillies has had a really good run, and we ought to appreciate it. “Red October” over these last four years has been the most incredible atmosphere one can experience in sports. I’m grateful to all of these guys, even the guys who are playing terribly right now. Four years is an eternity though in sports. Time passes everyone by. That 2008 group was the greatest era in Phillies history, and it was stone cold dead by the end of 2012. Sports are a young man’s game. Economics are a cruel reality. Being sentimental in the sports industry, and throwing around money chasing a ghost you aren’t going to catch is how you end with an old and broken team. It’s either going to happen or it isn’t. The people running your team need to know that. Otherwise you’ll be in a stadium with 15,000 people in three years watching a losing team play out the string.

I think the Phillies are actually not at the end of their window of contention if they want to stretch it with this group. In fact, they’ve won more games every year since Bryce Harper signed in Philadelphia. There’s a strong argument that you re-sign Schwarber and at least one of Realmuto and Suarez, and just hope your team is the hot one next October. You just run it back, because statistically it’s your best odds of reaching your goal, a championship. Look, we have done this in Philadelphia with the 76ers for the better part of the last decade. Our best shot has been to hope for a healthy Embiid, paired with some star guard, and things maybe will fall our way one year. Then we get to the next season, and things end the same way in the playoffs, or worse. Yes, the Phillies best chance of winning a title is to keep running out a team that has one of the best records in the league. Sure, one year they won’t be that good anymore. We don’t know when that will be, of course, but until then we should just keep trying it with tinkering around the edges. I’m sure that’s what the analytics say.

The Phillies are down 2-0 going to Los Angeles for game three facing elimination. Their top three hitters are a combined 2-for-21 with a few walks through two games, but it looks exactly like last year’s Mets series (if not worse), which kind of looks like the last few games of the 2023 Diamondbacks series, which of course, kind of looks like games 4 through 6 of the 2022 World Series. Not only have the top three bats gone cold again, but the bullpen has wilted under the unkind, bright lights of the playoffs, where every out has outsized meaning. The manager has again, ran out his bullpen arms for one or two too many outs in big spots. Topper has had a great four years here, but Dave Roberts is doing what Carlos Mendoza and Torey Lovullo did before him- press the right buttons. The other teams make adjustments in the series, and even in the games, and the Phillies just can’t quite answer. There just isn’t some stroke of brilliance there, nothing that stems the tide against them. And it’s like this every October. Sure, one year it didn’t happen until the World Series. Here’s the truth though- the Phillies are one loss from a third straight playoff series loss to a team that won less games than them in the regular season. There is something pretty damning about that alone, let alone that it looks the same each time.

The playoffs are just a different beast than the regular season in every sport. In baseball, the biggest difference is that you do have to lean much heavier on your best players. Your bench players can’t really be getting many at-bats, let alone starts. Your middle relievers should be getting the bare minimum number of outs. Your starters should be willing to come out of the bullpen. We can criticize Topper for the fact he is less aggressive within these realities than other managers, but that’s really not the whole story. The Phillies have a tremendous payroll. They have big time star players. Those players have just come up a little short each year. And now we’re one loss from that happening again.

Don’t eulogize the living. Ranger Suarez will throw game three, and while starting pitching hasn’t been the reason the Phillies are losing, Suarez has shown in the past that he is capable of pitching on a whole other level in big spots. Then you have the choice of going with Nola or going back to Sanchez, and well, if you win that game this is a totally different discussion about the greatest comeback in team history. I mean, in truth, they had a better year than the Dodgers and they have been pretty good against them for several years. There’s no reason this team *can’t* comeback in this series. Five game series are notoriously weird and lend themselves to weird outcomes. There’s plenty of reasons to still think it’s possible.

The problem with that though is I’m watching these games. Nothing we see makes us think this is going to happen. In fact, I recently went back and re-read what some of the national writers had to say before the 2022 season about this group, and it’s ringing true. The group the Phillies had assembled would certainly have nights they mashed the ball, but they also were prone to streaky hitting and a lot of strikeouts. This team is capable of putting on a show, but they are also capable of just being shut down for a week. In 2023, the Diamondbacks pitchers had a meeting on the flight back to Philadelphia for game six where their coaches essentially told them to stop giving in and throwing predictable pitches (aka- fastballs for strikes) to this team when they were sitting on it. This group has always been very good, but very flawed. It’s feast or famine. We’ve seen famine before. This looks like famine.

Wednesday night the Phillies will play another baseball game, then they will do so again if they win, on Thursday. Essentially a week from now they might be white hot and preparing for the NLCS, or they may be eliminated by Thursday morning. If this continues towards where it looks like they’re going, I think it’s time for a shake up with these Phillies. That, in my mind, should mean changes to the manager and the coaching staff. It should mean a willingness to trade some starting position players away. It should mean a willingness to let any combination of Kyle Schwarber, J.T. Realmuto, and Ranger Suarez go to free up space to add new and different pieces. It should absolutely mean guaranteeing a spot to Justin Crawford off of a sensational season in left and center fields in AAA this season, who looks ready to come in and make an impact. It should also mean laying out a pathway for Aidan Miller to hit his way into the 2026 infield by the middle of next summer. I would suggest that if this series doesn’t turn around, the Phillies should be married to absolutely nothing going into the off-season. Running it back in 2026 is most likely going to end how all the other years have ended, or worse. Sure, fans will be sad when players who did great things for this group walk away. Fans will eventually learn to love future players if they come in and perform.

Again, as I said above, appreciate everything you’ve had. Also, for all things a season. Father Time is unbeaten.