Phillies

Does This Phillies Team Really Feel Different?

By Nick Piccone

Published: Sep 16th, 2025 · 4:16 PM EDT

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The Phillies clinched their second straight National League East title Monday night in Los Angeles in a game that had a little bit of everything against a team chasing them for a first-round bye, the Dodgers. 

That made me think of something we as a fanbase thought a lot about heading into last year’s postseason:

Does this Phillies team really feel different from previous iterations?

Kyle Schwarber gave the Phillies an early 1-0 lead with a dinger. Weston Wilson gave the Phillies the lead in the 7th inning with a two-run dinger. Bryce Harper came up clutch in the 8th inning with a solo dinger, giving the Phillies the lead again. Yes, Jhoan Durán blew another save, but the Phillies came up clutch in extra innings with a double steal by Harrison Bader and Harper, followed by a sacrifice fly by J.T. Realmuto that gave the Phils the eventual game-winning run.

Despite an anxiety-ridden bottom of the 10th inning, David Robertson closed it out to give the Phils the divisional crown once again.

It felt… October 2022ish, on the field and in the clubhouse. They found a way to win. In the clutch. Something they also did a bit in 2023.

Instead of backing into a divisional title by way of a Mets [who were not in action Monday] loss, they went toe-to-toe with the defending World Series Champions and, even after a couple of hiccups, came up big when it mattered.

When’s the last time the Phillies did that? It certainly wasn’t in 2024, when, after a trip to London, they became a maddeningly average team and often did not come through in clutch situations. They backed their way into a Game 2 NLDS win to give us some hope that maybe that was the turn-the-switch moment they needed. But they went out with a whimper in Citi Field in four games. 

The story of the last four seasons contains four separate tales. In 2022, the first season with the current expanded MLB playoff system, the Phils became the first 6th seed to not only make the playoffs, but reach the World Series. However, that September was brutal, leaving many of us believing they wouldn’t clinch a playoff berth. 

In 2023, the season started out much the same as 2022, but Harper didn’t rejoin the lineup until May after recovering from Tommy John surgery and the Phillies didn’t need a new manager to shake things up. Their schedule in the first part of the season was tough, and they more than made up for it in the second half, holding on to the first Wild Card spot for much of it. They went into the playoffs one of the hottest teams in the league, vanquished the Marlins and Braves with relative ease, and looked poised to do the same to the Diamondbacks before the eventual collapse.

In 2024, the Phillies once again backed into the playoffs – winning the NL East for the first time in 13 years, mind you – by playing .500 baseball for half of the season. They started out red-hot and were the best team in baseball for much of the year before the Dodgers took the No. 1 seed from them. There were plenty of us hoping they would “flip the switch” come playoff time. Even Realmuto said after the season ended that the players were hoping for the same thing. It never felt like we bought into them as a serious playoff threat. Some of it was because of how 2023 ended against the Diamondbacks at Citizens Bank Park. What home-field advantage? Some of it was because the hitting didn’t wait until October to go cold. They were cold for much of the season. (Offensive stats don’t always tell the story – if you score runs in bunches, you can still notice when an offense is playing poorly.)

One similarity 2023 and 2024 had was the team hadn’t really faced the adversity they have in 2025. They were relatively healthy. They were World Series favorites heading into last year’s postseason. It was as if the adversity faced in 2022 would eventually catapult them to a title. And maybe it will. But this year, expectations have been tempered, albeit most of us have still enjoyed the regular season to this point. The Phillies were never really out of the playoff chase. The offense once again went on a long cold streak, and even though it’s heated up recently, there still looms the possibility of that happening in the worst moment of the season. And yes, people are still thinking about that.

But they’re going to have to do it without Zack Wheeler. They’re going to have to do it with a right field platoon instead of the left field one with which they began the season. They’re going to have to do it with Aaron Nola probably being the 4th starter in a playoff rotation. Trea Turner might be a wild card given how tricky hamstring injuries can be. Many sense the trade deadline acquisitions of Durán and Bader gave back to this team some of that fire they lost in 2024. They lost Rhys Hoskins, a guy who many still believe would have prevented the way the 2024 season ended just by being there, whether on the field or in the dugout. 

There’s been a renaissance of the feeling that this team is different. Whether it’s how they react on the field, how they sound in interviews, or simply by their business-like approach that feels a little bit looser than last year. So, yes, this team is different. It feels different. They’ve got some important guys coming off the books in the offseason, so they know this is likely it.

And maybe that’s what they needed.