This is the year the Phillies win the World Series.
While I wholeheartedly believe that to my core, I have had similar feelings each of the last two seasons, and been proven wrong. In each of the past six regular seasons, the Phils have increased their win total, only to fall one step shorter in the playoffs.
Entering the 2025 season, the core of the roster is another year older, and Father Time generally does not smile on rosters as they age. Bryce Harper, Nick Castellanos, J.T. Realmuto, Kyle Schwarber and Trea Turner are on the other side of 30 years old, so it’s understandable to feel as if the sand is slipping through the hourglass.
These conflicting emotions were at the center of an excellent article written by Hall of Fame baseball writer Jayson Stark of The Athletic who asked the question, “Is their arrow pointing up or down?”
On the latest edition of Hittin’ Season, Stark joined the podcast to talk a bit more about his article and, from where I sit, there are more reasons to take an optimistic view of the Phils than a pessimistic one.
It’s hard to label the Phillies a team of chokers, despite their recent postseason failings.
In 2022, they were a mostly mediocre team in the regular season before a final week push earned them a wildcard spot that didn’t exist until that season. To say they snuck into the playoffs is an understatement. However, once in the tournament, they caught fire and played three weeks of the clutchest baseball we’ve ever seen in this city.
In ‘23, they were better in the regular season, earning the top wildcard spot, and were rampaging through the postseason again until Games 6 and 7 of the NLCS, an inexplicable collapse that will haunt the city forever.
Last year, they had a dominant first half, played .500 ball in the second, won the NL East going away and then got curb-stomped by the Mets in the divisional round. The bats went silent, the bullpen imploded and the rest is history.
So what will this team’s legacy be if they don’t find a way to win the World Series in 2025? Will that magical 2022 season be regarded as a fluke? Will it be downgraded in our memory banks as the high point of an underachieving team that should have won it all at some point?
Maybe it’s unfair to label this Phillies group underachievers if they don’t figure out a way to win the World Series this year. It is, after all, exceedingly difficult. The 2011-14 Detroit Tigers, a team also built by Dave Dombrowski, had three Hall of Fame players on the roster (Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander and Miguel Cabrera) in their primes, with a star-studded roster supporting them, and yet they only reached one World Series in their four playoff appearances. They lost that World Series, too.
I believe the Phillies WILL win it all this year. But it’s fair to say their legacy hangs in the balance if they don’t.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
