As season resumes, history chases Phillies

One of the few benefits for a baseball organization with a long history of failure that has been interrupted only occasionally by brief fits of competence is that it is very difficult to set team records for futility.

God bless the Phillies, though. They're taking a run at it.

Since the team began playing, a stretch of a mere 133 years, the Phils have won two lonely championships and had only 58 winning seasons. That's a lot of losing. They lost at least 100 games 14 times, including 1941, when they set the franchise mark of 111 losses with a team that had Cy Blanton and Si Johnson in the starting rotation and nothing but sighs coming from the stands.

That was a really bad team, and it would take an epically awful one to challenge the record, but the current Phillies just might have what it takes. If they can't do it, no one can.

As they returned from last week's all-star break, the Phils were on pace to lose 110 times, but even that is misleading. They were only six games under .500 after their first 40 games this season, but have played .250 ball since, as the free fall gained speed. At that rate, they would be looking at more like 114 defeats and a loss record for a franchise that is more than 1,100 games under .500 and would need a seven-season winning streak to get back to even.

You have to be a special kind of bad to stand out amid that historic company, but the 2015 Phillies do. What is almost as galling to fans as the quality of baseball, however, is the organization's stubborn insistence that nothing is really out of the ordinary here, just some tough luck and a couple of decisions that didn't work out as well as they might have.

There's no question that when a tide rises as high as it did for the Phillies in their five straight division championship seasons, there is eventually going to be a falling tide that follows. The question is how low it will go. This current cycle that has left the team beached and gasping included some poor luck, particularly with injuries, but it can't rank as a forehead-smacking surprise that older players sometimes break down. The Phils organization didn't prepare properly for this next phase and didn't have the courage to enter into it when the time was right.

"I know we all tend to look at things in the snapshot of time. Right now, the Phillies snapshot is not all that great," Andy MacPhail said when he was introduced as the incoming team president. "But I really have to applaud this organization for the path it has taken recently. I think it's the right path. Any team that really devotes themselves to a rebuild gets rewarded in the end."

That's a sound perspective, but the Phils have done no such thing, at least until now, and the extent to which they appear committed to rebuilding has been out of necessity. If Chase Utley had been able to hit .260, he'd still be the starting second baseman and Cesar Hernandez would either be in triple A or sitting on the bench. The team's newfound religion on the need to rebuild might be in response to co-owner John Middleton's displeasure with the state of things, or it might be a faulty lightbulb that finally went on, but it is a long way from the stance during spring training that the team might still be reasonably competitive.

The final unraveling began when lefthander Cliff Lee was shut down because of a torn flexor tendon and opted to just go home and rest it rather than having the surgery the team asked him to get. Then the season opened and Utley's game went horribly south, with Carlos Ruiz and Ryan Howard not that far behind him. A couple of pitchers got hurt, nobody hit, and that's how you lose 39 of 52 skidding into the break. Along the way, the manager quit, too. Ryne Sandberg had enough of being disrespected on every floor of the ballpark, and knew he wasn't going to survive into another season, anyway.

So, yeah, it's been quite a ride, and the assumption is that MacPhail, once he is handed the sheriff's star after a half-season of target practice, will order up a few more changes. Even if it is just for appearance, that will have to mean a new general manager to replace Ruben Amaro Jr.

"Today's game sort of defies timetables," MacPhail said. "What doesn't work is if you have a change of strategy every two years. Those teams that have a philosophy and stick with it get rewarded."

The only philosophy that lasts is to build solidly from the bottom with a farm system that can identify talent and develop it. Anything else is bound to fail sooner rather than later. The Phillies lost their way in that regard when the big club began to win, and the result is what you've been watching on the field.

Putting the scouting and minor-league departments back in order will take time, and the new president and new general manager will be granted that. Eventually, they might even put together an organization that will make some enjoyable history. This franchise has had plenty of experience with the other kind, and all of those enduring this very special season will simply be happy when it is history, too.

@bobfordsports