Phillies-Braves series split left fans with two lingering playoff worries

The Philadelphia Phillies are a talented baseball team. That talent has gotten them all the way to an 81-63 record on the season, good for the top Wild Card spot in the National League. Unfortunately, they aren’t talented enough to outrun their two biggest issues: a porous bullpen and narcoleptic offense, both of which were on display in this weekend’s series split against the Atlanta Braves.

The Phils entered the four-game set against Atlanta with a golden opportunity to put themselves back in the race for a divisional crown. They came into Friday night’s matchup 4.0 games back of the Braves for first place, and could have cut that deficit down to 2.0 by taking three of four, or even erased it completely with a clean sweep. Unfortunately, the Phils dropped the first and third games of the matchup, leaving them no better than their previous 4.0-game deficit when all was said and done.

The Phillies have been largely the same for five seasons now, relying on a few key hitters and a dynamite starting rotation to carry the team to victory. Unfortunately, superstars Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper are oftentimes not enough to compensate for seven other lineup spots that produce varying levels of mediocrity, and the performances of the electric starting staff are too often lit on fire by a moribund bullpen.

A series split against the Braves did nothing to calm worrying Phillies fans

Both of those major shortcomings were on full display this weekend, as Friday night’s 5-2 loss featured a lineup that was completely stymied, while Sunday’s 5-4 heartbreaker was largely due to the relief corps allowing the floodgates to open late in the game. Many fans expect these familiar flaws to rear their ugly heads come October, and the Phillies have done nothing to assuage those fears.

Take Friday’s contest for instance, a marquee matchup between Chris Sale and Cristopher Sánchez. That’s the kind of pitching the Phillies should expect to encounter in the postseason, and they proved exactly why the fanbase has little faith that they’ll fare any better when the lights are brightest.

Sale made mincemeat of his opposition over six innings, allowing just seven baserunners and two runs before handing the ball over to a bullpen that continued to shut them down. Add in the fact that Sánchez was merely good instead of otherworldly, and the Phillies had no chance to win that game. To top it all off, last year’s season-ender Orion Kerkering let Atlanta tack on insurance runs in the eighth, justifying the fanbase’s fears that he’ll crumble once again in a future playoff series.

Sunday’s affair was somehow more disappointing, as the offense was able to jump out to an early lead and add on a few more in the seventh inning. The resurgent Aaron Nola looked like his former All-Star self, firing 7.0 frames of one-run ball, allowing just five men to reach base.

Interim manager Don Mattingly handed the ball to tantalizing rookie Alex McFarlane in the eighth, and the 25-year-old served up a meatball to archnemesis Ronald Acuña Jr. for a game-tying three-run shot. Elite closer Jhoan Duran had a rare mortal outing, surrendering the go-ahead run in the top of the ninth and that was all she wrote.

What makes the Phillies so infuriating is that they have the talent to win a World Series if they could just stop shooting themselves in the foot. The two games they won in this series show just how good they can be, as Zack Wheeler returned to form in Saturday’s crisp 4-2 victory, while trade steal Jesús Luzardo threw his first career complete game shutout on Labor Day.

Philadelphians can be a hard bunch to please, especially after they’ve been kicked in the teeth for four straight years. Most fans feel like they already know how this movie ends, and the only way to change that perception is to go out there and do it. Unfortunately for the Phillies, they just can’t get out of their own way.

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