Phillies are after the second Wild Card spot, apparently
It's mid-September, and Ben Revere has a message for you disparagers:
You heard the man. Ten games under .500, fifth place in the NL East, and seven games out of the second Wild Card spot, the Phillies are ready to make their run.
Here's how the last 18 games play out:
Pirates
These last two games with the Buccos are the starting point, and therefore the most crucial. It was a big win last night, made even more inspiring by the winning run being knocked in by a couple of the younger studs.
This all hinges on putting the best parts of the Phillies at the forefront - get a lead, then rely on the absurdly good, if painfully awkward, bullpen. Yes, last night was technically the first time the Phillies beat the Pirates this season, but that's the point: Clearly, it's late September, and the Phillies are ready to start taking this seriously.
Jerome Williams, the Phillies' key late season acquisiton, will go up against Vance Worley, who seems to have figured a few things out since being demoted to the Twins' minor league system a year ago. Then it's A.J. Burnett taking on Francisco Liriano, whom the Phillies have not faced this season. In a single start against his former team, Burnett threw seven innings, allowing only five hits and three runs. Plus, you have to factor in how crazed he'll be to make the playoffs in his final season before maybe retiring. Or something.
Look, I don't want to freak anybody out, but these two games will pretty much settle the Phillies' fate once and for all. Check out this terrible team slash line the Phillies have against Pittsburgh pitching this season: .159/.234/.285. There's a reason why they just won their first game against them all season last night.
Marlins
Tragically, the Marlins aren't the league-wide joke they were a year ago. In fact, they've been sitting on the Phillies' heads all season. Even without Jose Fernandez, they've got a roster full of fun, young .gif-worthy players.
The Phillies will be catching Henderson Alvarez in Game 1, who is making his first start since missing time with a strained oblique. Alvarez has sllowed the Phillies to pepper him with 30 hits over 26.2 innings already this season (19 of which came in Citizens Bank Park), and there's no lineup he walks more (eight BB).
The final game of the series doesn't have a starter listed yet, but Brad Hand will get the ball in Game 2. Hand has thrown more innings this year than any other season of his four-year career so far (93), and will be exhausted. His 4.45 ERA doesn't indicate that each one's been pretty, either. In just under six innings thrown against the Phillies this year, he's allowed four runs and eight hits.
@ Padres
It seems a little late for a west coast swing, but baseball is different now. Besides, there may not be a better team to have to play in the season's final weeks than the Padres, who not only are bad, but have been bad all season. Unlike the Phillies, they're not even starting to see a few blips on the flatline.
The Phillies have swept the Padres already in their single three-game series thus far, outscoring them 15-5. Even Kyle Kendrick managed to beat them, allowing one earned run in six innings. Better yet, Kendrick didn't walk anybody, and the bullpen followed suit to deliver nine walk-free innings. Burnett beat them too, as did Cole Hamels, who shut them out.
The Phillies logged their sixth-best team batting average against the Padres this season (.266) and their fourth-best OPS (.726). Those are their highest numbers against a team listed on this page. Hamels is slated to pitch in this series too, and has a 1.80 ERA outside of Philadelphia. The Padres aren't going to be a problem.
@ Athletics
Not only are we doing west coast trips this late in the season, but we're still playing interleague games! It's unnatural! But it may work in the Phillies' favor. A few months ago, the A's were the toast of the town. They'd acquired Jeff Samardzija, and blasted the trade deadline with a Yoenis Cespedes-for-Jon Lester deal that made their pitching staff the finest in the AL, right alongside the Tigers' eventual Verlander-Scherzer-Price nightmare.
Billy Beane wasn't putting his eggs in the "scrappy underdog" basket this year. And good for him. The problem is, baseball happened, and like the Tigers, after the A's assembled a dominant rotation, they somehow got worse.
Which is great news for the Phillies, who will play them at a critical time in their playoff run. This whole plan sort of hinges on hoping to play only bad teams, or at least good teams having a bad stretch, and nobody fits that description better than Oakland.
Of course, it'll be the horrifying Sonny Gray-Samardzija-Lester trio that face the Phillies during this series, and the A's might enter that feral state of a club playing to keep a playoff spot they at one point richly deserved. The Phillies will counter with Buchanan-Williams-Burnett, somewhat less formidable, but presumably throwing at a downtrodden A's lineup, sapped of its main power source in Cespedes.
@ Marlins
At the dawn of autumn, it's back to the Marlins again, this time in South Florida.
Should Miami's rotation stay intact, the Phillies will face Hand again in the series opener, while throwing Hamels and his stellar away ERA at the Fish, so that's a win.
Then it's Kendrick and Buchanan, the former of which has not caught many breaks this season, and the latter having rarely allowed more than three earned runs per start. In Kendrick's defense, the Marlins are the NL East team against whom he has his second-best ERA. Though that doesn't mean it's good (4.82). That's mostly thanks to his 6.00+ ERAs against the Mets and Nationals. He's made two starts in Marlins Park already this year, throwing 12.2 inning and giving up eight runs. So by now, the end of the season, he should have the kinks worked out.
Buchanan will have 100 MLB innings under his belt by this point, basically making him a grizzled vet. He's thrown one start against Miami, giving up two runs in five innings. Also, the Marlins seemed to be on the decline offensively, but September has seen them bang out a .300 team BA through eight games and an .810 OPS.
But the Phillies will be motivated, as the Marlins are one of the teams they need to climb over to reach the postseason. Any victory here means forward progress.
Braves
The Braves! Screw the Braves. The Braves have shown their true colors:
Besides, the Phillies have proven all it takes to not only beat the Braves, but ruin their whole magical season, is a single hideous Hunter Pence bloop that doesn't even make it out of the infield.
Besides, the Phillies will be so delirious with #WildCardFever at this point, they won't even be able to tell what team they're playing. They'll just be watching as Cole Hamels (0.45 ERA vs. the Braves this year) flirts with a no-no and Ben Revere's average balloons to .350.
Now, all the Phillies will need is for the five teams in front of them in the Wild Card standing to suffer Mets/Braves-esque meltdowns, and they'll be gold. Then it's just 12 more wins and they're bringing home the most improbable, least deserved World Series title in human history.