PHILADELPHIA — No one quite knows who ultimately gives the OK to start wheeling crates of champagne into a fall-time baseball clubhouse, only that when it happens there is no reason to look back.
“I never thought about it,” Rob Thomson was saying the other day, admitting that in-house celebrations are not a manager’s call. “It’s just what it is. You win something, you celebrate. It’s always been that way.”
So it has, and so the Phillies would take their fifth crack at it in two years Tuesday, defeating the Pittsburgh Pirates, 3-2, in 10 innings then dropping plastic covering from the ceiling and spilling champagne about the place to toast themselves for reaching the playoffs for the second consecutive year.
For their payroll, their assembled superstars, their power and their status as sitting pennant winners, it might have seemed that not finishing seventh in the National League was the least they could do. But it wasn’t that way at all this season. It wasn’t that way at all.
No, theirs was a season that began with Bryce Harper recovering from one surgery while Rhys Hoskins was being carted into the operating room for another. It was a season with such a slow start — they were 0-4, 1-5 and 5-10 among other early records — that Thomson vowed early to re-imagine how spring training was being run. Though hardly alone, they did have plentiful injuries. For a time, Trea Turner, who had signed for $300,000,000, could not resist waving at down-and-away sliders and ground balls near shortstop.
The Phillies, at first, did not have a fifth starter, or close to one. But nor did they ever find a reason to shrivel up and go away – not early, not in the middle, and not in the stretch, when they rampaged to the postseason, where they will enjoy a Citizens Bank Park advantage for every scheduled game of the first-round best-of-three.
“There were a lot of challenges,” said a champagne-drenched John Middleton, who authorized all the spending, “but that’s what makes this even sweeter.”
So party on.
“I think everybody goes through challenges over the course of a year, and multiple challenges,” Thomson said. “Last year, Harper got hurt. Last year, Zack Wheeler got hurt. We had things that we had to overcome. But the group we had last year, which is basically the same group we have this year, never buckled. They just kept moving forward. So ever since then, I have had the confidence they would do it again. And they did it.”
Of all the characteristics that would define the 2023 Phillies, it was that refusal to be bothered by tests. They recovered from losing streaks, multiple September bullpen follies, the Turner slump for the ages and the disappointment of being boat-raced by the Braves in their division. To the credit of Thomson, they did that by accepting new roles, sharing duties and never pouting when things went wrong. Or maybe that credit should go to Dave Dombrowski for finding players experienced enough to know how to mesh with one another. Both, probably.
“Dave Dombrowski built this team the way Pat Gillick did in 2008,” said Middleton. “He built it so that there was enough redundancy that if anything happened, we would be OK.”
Bryson Stott calmly went to second base when Turner was signed as a shortstop and showed why he someday will have played in multiple All-Star Games. Harper, who hustled back from elbow surgery, learned how to play first base. Brandon Marsh didn’t complain when Johan Rojas, who delivered the game-winning hit Tuesday, was promoted to play some in center field. Kyle Schwarber was meant to be a DH, but labored through most of a season in left as Harper healed. Nick Castellanos wanted to play left, but made himself into an excellent defensive rightfielder. Alec Bohm played first when asked, third when asked, and well all season. The committee of closers worked. The starting rotation, once Cristopher Sanchez settled in, worked even better.
It was the only way the Phillies would be able to overcome so many hurdles and still have the right to drench each other in alcohol despite a 12th consecutive season without finishing in first place.
“It’s difficult to get into the playoffs,” Thomson said. “And so, you need to celebrate that.”
The Phillies celebrated making the playoffs last season, then again after the first round, after the second and after the third. Then they lost in the World Series and were made to wait to try it again.
If it ends differently this time, it shouldn’t be a surprise.
“We’ve got everything we need,” Craig Kimbrel said. “We’ve got pitching. We’ve got a lot of guys who wanted to be here and had all the tools to get it done. And we’re just going to keep playing good ball and seeing the good things that happen.”
And not looking back.
Contact Jack McCaffery at jmccaffery@delcotimes.com
