No Pressure on the Phillies, but if they Lose this Series, the Vibes are Gone and they Become the Sixers
I threw this out there Tuesday night, half joking/half serious, and for some reason it blew up:
not to jump the gun here, but if the Phillies lose this series all of the vibes are gone and they become the Sixers
— Kevin Kinkead (@Kevin_Kinkead) October 8, 2024
Some agreed, some disagreed, as is life on the internet. Among the dissenters was my former Philadelphia Union postgame radio partner, Jon Jansen, who wrote, “getting ahead of this now. please stop comparing the phillies to the sixers. not even close to the same thing. thank you.”
Jansen is young and naive and therefore wrong on this one. It’s not a comparison of what each team has achieved in recent postseasons, because the Phillies have been to a World Series and NLCS while the Sixers can’t get past the second round. The Phillies were two games from a championship and the Sixers haven’t been closer than nine wins away since Vernon Maxwell and Rodney “The Sheriff” Buford were on the roster.
The Phillies/Sixers comparison is a vibes thing. A temperature check. If they lose this series to the Mets, all of the feel-good stuff that began in 2022 is officially dead. The house money is spent. The scrappy Wild Card team + low expectation honeymoon is over, and they become the “wake me up when the playoffs start” squad that the Sixers have been for several seasons now. Sure, you’ll get excited when they make a free agent acquisition or two, as we are with Paul George right now, but deep down you know it’s all about Joel Embiid’s health come April and you’re lying if you try to convince yourself otherwise. You’ll watch in November and December but that seed of Embiid doubt is firmly planted in your gut, like a grotesque basketball version of the flower Nick Sirianni grew a couple of seasons ago.
For the Phillies, their Embiid story is whether or not the bats will go cold in the playoffs, as has been the case for three straight seasons now, in series they could have or should have won. Maybe the Astros were the better team in 2022, and had been there before, but the Phillies were up 2-1 in that World Series before going on to score just three runs in the next three games, one of which included a combined Houston no-hitter. Same story last season, when they went up 3-2 on the Diamondbacks then scored three runs in games 6 and 7, losing the NLCS despite having two close-out games at Citizens Bank Park. And this year, through three games, they’ve scored just two runs twice and can’t get the offense going against New York’s starting pitching, making people like Sean Manaea look like prime Greg Maddux.
That’s the gist. It’s less about comparing the teams season-over-season and more about the macro-level vibe and enthusiasm. You remember how excited this city was for the 2017-2018 Sixers? When Embiid and Ben Simmons took the floor for the first time en route to 53 wins and a second round series against Boston? They lost to the better team, no problem. Next season? Kawhi Leonard’s quadruple doink in Game 7. It happens, vibes are still there. Then we witnessed the bubble exit and Atlanta Hawks choke job, which is what this Mets series will be if the Phillies lose. They have no business losing to this New York team the same way the Sixers had no business losing to that Atlanta team.
If your English teacher taught you about the narrative curve, you know how the rising action leads to the climax, falling action, and lastly, the denouement. The Phillies of 2022 and 2023 were in the best spot you can be, coming out of a decade of nothing to emerge as a contender. That’s the rising action. The Sixers were in the same spot from 2017 to 2021, give or take, depending on how you look at the James Harden era, but now they’re on the downside of this slope:
If the Phillies go World Series loss –> NLCS loss –> NLDS loss, that is the “falling action” defined. Like the 2007 to 2011 run, only without the World Series title at the beginning. And you hope that signing someone like Juan Soto, just to throw a name out there, has the same effect as Paul George, essentially pushing them backwards on this slope, but in the back of your mind you’re still wondering if Bryce Harper, Trea Turner, Kyle Schwarber, and Nick Castellanos are going to hit when it really matters. It’s about the big money guys as much as it is any new faces they bring in. The core of this team, starting pitching included, is already 30+, highly paid, and not getting younger.
Anyway, not trying to be a miserab. Not trying to be Negadelphia. There’s still life. If they get it done on Wednesday night, they’re coming home for a Game 5 at Citizens Bank Park with Zack Wheeler on the mound, and you have to feel good about that. But if they don’t, that magical buzz of 2022 and 2023 is officially gone, and they become one of those teams where we’re not paying attention every night, but we’re checking box scores and waiting for the postseason instead.