Is it OK to Say the Phillies Have Been Lucky?

July 18, 2024

     There are more than 35 famous saying about the importance of luck in our everyday lives. Most people love when you call them lucky. But no sports team wants that label. Even when it fits.

     It is a sacrilege to say the 2024 Phillies — the best team in  baseball according to won-loss records — have been more than just good during the three-plus months before the All-Star break. They have been incredibly lucky, too.

     But sorry. It’s true. Not only has their schedule been a parade of awful teams playing terrible baseball, but even the good teams seem to smash straight into a pothole right before they meet the Phillies.

     Surely you saw what happened when a rare good opponent, the Los Angeles Dodgers, made their annual visit to Citizens Bank Park just before the break. LA was missing two-thirds of their starting lineup and several of their best pitchers, all out with injuries. It was part of a pattern.

     Yes, the Phillies are an excellent team this season, with a tantalizing chance to win a championship. They have a great mix of old and young players, a manager who is unflappable and a GM who is always finding ways to make the roster better.

     But luck has been a major factor so far, too.

     With the exception of J.T. Realmuto, the Phils have bobbed and weaved their way past the injury epidemic that has depleted the rosters of so many rivals. Even when they did get hurt — most recently, Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber — it was for a week or so and the players were back, good as new.

     Other teams have not been so fortunate. The Braves are simply not the same team without their best everyday player, Ronald Acuna, and their best starting pitcher, Spencer Strider. They are both out for the year with major injuries.

     The Mets have been without their ace, Kodai Senga, all year. Their best everyday player, Starling Marte, has been in an out of the lineup all year with injuries. Without those players, they stink. The Nationals and the Marlins are just plain bad, healthy or not.

     Those division rivals will only get worse once they sell off their best players before the trade deadline. If you think the Phils have had an easy schedule so far, wait till they face all of the depleted rosters in the final two months.

     It’s a safe bet that this Phillies team will win the NL East without breaking a sweat this year. There’s also a great chance for them to topple the record of 102 wins in the regular season set back in 2011.

     Of course, we all know what happened in the playoffs that season. Manager Charlie Manuel’s obsession with the record won him the hottest team in baseball, St. Louis, as a playoff opponent. And that’s when everything changed.

     Look, I’m not here to ruin everyone’s 2024 joyride. I just have maybe a bit more perspective than the average fan. I have seen fortunes change quickly. I’m simply suggesting that the best record in the regular season doesn’t mean much if it doesn’t extend into the playoffs.

     And that leads me to one last saying about luck.

     The only sure thing about luck is that it will change.

     While Howie Roseman and Dave Dombrowski continue to win the approval of the relentlessly forgiving Philadelphia sports media, I’m going to embrace an often-maligned (by me) GM who has decided to put all of his chips in the middle of the table.

     Yes, it’s time to give some props to Sixers GM Daryl Morey.

     After an abysmal season marked by injuries to Joel Embiid and a first-round exit at the hands of the Knicks, Morey took a look at this roster and decided it was now or never for his team.

     So, in quick order, he signed Paul George, Eric Gordon, Andre Drummond and K.J. Martin, brought back Kyle Lowry and Kelly Oubre and locked down Tyrese Maxey on a new five-year deal.

     Whew! All of those roster moves happened within a nine-day period between July 6 and 15. And all of them said the same thing: If The Process is ever going to bear fruit, it’s now.

     Obviously, the biggest question is whether George, at 34, can blend his skills with the two big stars on the team, Embiid and Maxey. And, of course, stay healthy. In the past five seasons, George has played more than more than 56 games only once, last year (74).

     Meanwhile, Embiid was absent even more than George over that span, including his 39-game output last season. That gives the Sixers two players over 30 with major injury histories.

     But if they stay reasonably healthy, and if Maxey continues his development into a superstar, and coach Nick Nurse finds a way to use his deep and versatile bench, and Morey keeps his eye out for . . . .

     Well, you get the point.

     Maybe the Sixers can end their 41-year championship drought in 2025.

     Hey, maybe the Sixers can borrow whatever good-luck charms are working so well for the Phillies right now.

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    I have been wrestling with a math problem for months now, but I can’t come up the answer that so many media people have gotten.

     I can’t see how the Eagles can remove two of their all-time best leaders (Jason Kelce and Fletcher Cox) and their best defensive player (Haason Redick) and then project to be a 12 or 13-win team right after the worst collapse in franchise history.

     Yes, the Birds added Saquon Barkley to the backfield, brought in a horde of fast, young defensive backs and added some interesting draft picks, but we’re talking here about Kelce, Fletcher and Reddick. If they could lose six of seven with those studs, how are they going to prosper without them?

     And then there’s Nick Sirianni, the coach with nothing to do. He has no day-to-day authority over the offense, defense or special teams, and he was clueless to fix the team last season.

     Who sees Sirianni as the solution to anything?

     In all the years I have covered and talked about the Eagles, I can recall no season where the optimism was less rational than this one.

     Twelve wins, you say?

     How about five?

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Idle thoughts. . . . .

     * Philadelphia lost one of its smartest and most versatile voices last week when my former colleague Glen Macnow retired from WIP. It was my privilege to work with him in newspapers and radio. He was great at everything he did because he accepted nothing less from himself. Well done, my friend.

     * We also lost one of the most colorful and successful former Philly sports executives when Pat Williams passed away on July 17. Pat was GM of the Sixers when they won their last championship in 1983, and he was the best promoter in our history. (His best gimmick was Victor the Wrestling Bear.) Pat wrote more than a dozen books and adopted more than a dozen kids. It’s a sure bet that he got the most out of every day in his amazing 84 years. RIP, Pat.

     * You know the All-Star festivities are past the point of no return when the highlight of the four-day break is a dreadful performance of the national anthem by an admittedly drunk country singer Ingrid Andress before the Home Run Derby. This is a perfect time to end all of the All-Star Games. They have outlived their appeal.

     * Sports history was made on July 17 when the youngest pro player, Cavan Sullivan, appeared in a game for the Philadelphia Union. Sullivan is 14. You know the old joke, “I have shirts older than him”? In my case, it’s actually true. I have a Phillies 2008 World Series polo that I still wear regularly. Sullivan was born in 2009. Wow.