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Rhetorical Question: Have the Phillies Won 5 of 6, or Lost 10 of 16?
Published:
The Phillies swept the Blue Jays on Father’s Day, extending their winning streak to four games.
That’s two series wins in a row against teams above .500.
Now the Phils are 42-29 and 2.5 games behind the Mets for the division lead halfway through June, so we ask a rhetorical question:
Captain Obvious would say this is a dumb poll question because both answers are correct. The Phillies have won 5 of 6 but they have also lost 10 of 16. But that’s why it’s rhetorical, because it’s not meant to be answered, it’s meant to take the temperature of fans and generate a discussion, and the topic is one of recency bias and how we feel about a baseball team that’s shown high highs and low lows in 2025.
My theory was that the first answer would get the most votes, for the fact that we as sports fans and media tend to knee jerk from one side of the spectrum to the other, from Negadelphia to Posidelphia. When the Phillies were on an extended losing run, it was time to fire Rob Thomson and DFA the outfield. Now they’re coming off two series in which they scored 37 runs and only conceded 19.
Sure enough, at least through the early part of voting, the response looked like this:
In actuality, the real question here is which version of the Phillies is the real version of the Phillies. Is it the team that hits .257 and gets on base at a .332 clip? Those numbers are both top four in Major League Baseball. Is it the team with the 1-2-3-4 punch of Zack Wheeler, Cristopher Sanchez, Jesus Luzardo, and Ranger Suarez, that can mow down lineups with ease when they’re on their game? Or is it the team with the shaky bullpen and lack of outfield contribution with a hitting core that always seems to go cold at the same time, and/or swing at garbage low and outside of the zone?
The cop out answer is that it’s really both, and therein lies the concern. There’s a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde thing going on here, exacerbated perhaps by the departures of Jeff Hoffman and Carlos Estevez and the overall form of Matt Strahm and suspension of Jose Alvarado. They’ve been dealing with some injuries through the early part of the year, to Suarez, Aaron Nola, and Bryce Harper. Johan Rojas and Brandon Marsh aren’t exactly Ty Cobb out there. Dave Dombrowski can certainly address the high high/low low rollercoaster ride by bringing in reinforcements, especially in the bullpen, and realizing that if you don’t go for it now, that this highly-paid group isn’t getting any younger.
But you see that when the Phillies are on, they’re REALLY on, and it reinforces the thought among the more positive side of the fan base that there’s enough talent on this roster to get back to the World Series. This is the part of the base that didn’t think the Arizona and New York series were lost because the D Backs and Mets had better players, but because the Phillies didn’t show enough discipline at the plate and didn’t play their best baseball when it mattered most. That doesn’t mean you’re fine with running it back in 2025, but you know that with some consistency, this is a team that still looks like the 2022 and 2023 squads that just fell short. Ultimately, it’s a squad that is good enough to reinforce, and it should be reinforced so that you’re doing everything possible to remove the low lows from the equation.
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