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If You’re Negative on the Phillies, Note that it’s the 10-Year Anniversary of Pete Mackanin Naming Jeremy Hellickson Opening Day Starter
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The Phillies’ season begins on Thursday and some fans are feeling it while others are not. That’s because we’re at the “falling action” portion of Freytag’s Pyramid, where the excitement of the past few years has crested and we’re now wondering if this team has what it takes to get over the hump and win it all:
The Phillies are a little bit like the Sixers in the sense that some fans simply want to be woken up when the playoffs begin. They think the decision makers are “running it back” and didn’t do enough to improve. True or not, returning to the field is the core of a 96-win team that won the division for a second straight season and had its best win total since 2011, when Roy Halladay was mowing down hitters left and right.
Speaking of throwback Phillies pitchers, Monday was the 10-year anniversary of Pete Mackanin announcing that Jeremy Hellickson would start the 2016 season opener in Cincinnati. Hellickson pitched well that game, six innings of three-hit, one-run baseball, but the Phillies lost 6-2 in Ohio and could only muster a two-run homer from Maikel Franco. They rolled out Aaron Nola for game 2, Charlie Morton for game 3, and then Jerad Eickhoff began the fourth game of the season against the Mets in New York.
The Phillies started 0-4 and only got their first W of the season when Vince Velasquez pitched an April gem in which he threw six innings of no-run baseball while striking out nine batters.
Final score: Phillies 1, Mets 0.
They’d go on to win only 70 more games and miss the playoffs for the fifth straight season. Hellickson was traded the following year for Hyun-soo Kim and Garrett Cleavinger while the Phils stumbled through a few more dismal years before Bryce Harper decided to take his talents to Citizens Bank Park and pull this franchise out of the dark ages.
So the moral of the story is that perspective goes a long way. It wasn’t THAT long ago that the Phillies were shit, a rudderless ship stuck in the fog, looking for the next Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, Cole Hamels, and Jimmy Rollins to usher in a new era. They got there finally in 2022, went all the way to the World Series, and haven’t been back since.
But this is not some scrub team in 2026. We all have our frustrations with the end of the Arizona, New York, and LA series, but the Phillies aren’t rolling out Vinny Velo and Freddy Galvis. They don’t have Ricardo Pinto throwing out of the bullpen. This team has a legitimate rotation full of bona fide studs, highly-paid sluggers at multiple positions, and an owner who just wants his fucking trophy back.
Could things be better? They can always be better. But they can get worse. A LOT worse.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com