The Philadelphia Phillies just went through their first rough stretch, if you want to call it that, of the 2024 Major League Baseball season.

It’s an incredible luxury to call a road trip to the west coast at the end of May the first rough spot.

It really puts into perspective just how incredible the Phillies’ start has been, and when you put their first two months in the context of the National League, it somehow looks better.

A win over the St. Louis Cardinals on Friday would make the Phillies the first team to 40 wins in baseball. That would mean the Phils have won two-thirds of their games in two months.

You’d take that type of performance over any two-month stretch in the regular season no matter what small issues emerge from the 60 games.


The only real adversity (I absolutely hate that word by the way) the Phils faced was Trea Turner’s injury. Edmundo Sosa stepped in and hit .304 in May. He’s playing so well that the bullshit argument of Turner coming back to play outfield emerged on social media this week. We’ve reached the point where some people are trying to find a way to get Edmundo fucking Sosa more playing time. If that’s your biggest talking point on May 30th, then your team is doing a good job at winning baseball games. Hell, even a portion of Phillies Twitter bullied Nick Castellanos into a three-hit game on Wednesday after it was pointed out that he hasn’t been playing great.

Again, when your biggest concern is the No.5-6 hitter’s performance, you’re doing a lot of things right.

Every other contender in the National League is dealing with far bigger issues than what Phils fans have complained about in the last week.

The Atlanta Braves can’t win without Ronald Acuna Jr. in the lineup. They’ve have lost four of their last six games to the Pittsburgh Pirates and Washington Nationals. A full-blown mutiny would occur if that happened to the Phillies.

Atlanta literally can’t find a fifth starter in its rotation, so no matter how well Chris Sale and Max Fried are pitching there’s still a gigantic hole in the rotation. They would take Taijuan Walker in a heartbeat.

Sure, the Los Angeles Dodgers have superstars galore at the top of their lineup, but the bottom of their order has been atrocious and that was a big reason why they recently lost five games in a row. Their losing woes were cured this week by playing the New York Mets, which I’m not sure counts as a real baseball team right now.

It’s no coincidence that the Dodgers’ recent struggles happened once Max Muncy left their lineup on May 16th. The Dodgers scored more than five runs three times in the last 15 days without Muncy in the lineup. Yes, they still have Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani, and Freddie Freeman, but if they don’t hit, it’s been rough for them to generate anything.

The rest of the National League is at least seven games back in the win column. The Milwaukee Brewers are the only other NL team with 30 wins.

The Arizona Diamondbacks (remember them?) are mired in fourth place in the NL West one year after their World Series appearance. That’s a real team with concerns and one that should be hot-taked into oblivion.

That brings me back to the whole point of writing this –

The Phillies are going to be fine. Every team loses a few games in a row in a baseball season, and if it gets worse this week, they can always get right by bludgeoning the Mets in London next weekend.