Fueled by playoff failures, the Phillies have the best record in baseball

Or what about the whole team?

Boasting the best record in baseball, the Phillies are 29-6 in their last 35 games, matching the best 35-game stretch in franchise history, last achieved in 1892.

Who can forget the presidential election of 1892, when Grover Cleveland defeated Benjamin Harrison to become the only president elected to two non-consecutive terms?

Grover may be out of fashion these days as a first name – with apologies to the blue furry monster, if the Phillies win it all, they’ll have a parade down Broad Street rather than Sesame Street – but the Phillies are still on winning streaks like they did it more than 130 years ago.

The Phillies are 37-14 and lead the NL East by six games against the Atlanta Braves as they begin a six-game trip Friday at Colorado.

They’re winning at a rate that even Steve Carlton and Mike Schmidt or Jimmy Rollins and Ryan Howard couldn’t muster this early in a season. Their recent streaks are as breathtaking as a Schwarbomb: Philadelphia is 17-3 in May, they’re off to the best 50-game start in baseball since the Seattle Mariners in 2001, and they’ve already swept seven series, the most recent being a three-man against the World Series champions, the Texas Rangers.

“This is the best team I’ve ever been a part of,” said right fielder and 12-year veteran Nick Castellanos.

The root of this early streak may well be found in last season’s playoff failure. A year after a surprise run to the World Series in 2022 that saw them lose to the Houston Astros, the Phillies lost 2-0 and 3-2 leads in the NL Championship Series to the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2023 .

Kyle Schwarber, Trea Turner, Bryce Harper and Castellanos were 5-for-53 (.094) with 11 walks, 22 strikeouts and two RBIs in Philadelphia’s four NLCS losses. Against six Arizona pitchers in Game 7, the four went 1-for-15 (.067) with five strikeouts and no RBIs.

“I had a really hard time enjoying any part of the offseason, even when I was on vacation, just because of how this bitter season ended,” Castellanos said.

The Phillies suffered the kind of franchise-crushing losses that often lead to a roster overhaul. Maybe one of their free-swinging hitters will be traded for an arm. Maybe they let a few free agents go.

Instead, team president Dave Dombrowski stuck with it.

In sports parlance, the Phillies have decided to go back.

They re-signed local right-hander Aaron Nola to a seven-year, $172 million contract. They signed manager Rob Thomson to an extension through 2025. They eliminated any possible distraction Zack Wheeler might have had in the final year of his contract by re-signing the right-hander to a $126 million contract over three years.

“There’s some kind of edge in everyone,” Thomson said. “They want to end it.”

Why waste a good thing?

“The fact that we were able to face adversity together (and) feel loss together only strengthens our bond as a group,” Castellanos said. “It’s a tip of the hat to the owners and the front office for believing in the pieces that were already there.”

The Phillies had a payroll of $243,476,617 on their opening day, a far cry from 2002, when New York Times writer Murray Chass described the franchise as “a big-market team disguised as a beneficiary of social assistance from a small market.

Oh sure, Harper is on tears again, with 12 homers. JT Realmuto has scored in a career-high 13 straight games. Third baseman Alec Bohm is second in the National League with 46 RBIs and best in baseball with 20 doubles.

Yes, the Phillies can hit.

But it’s a retrospective approach to the rotation that presents it as the best in baseball.

Phillies starters have thrown at least seven innings in 18 starts this year, the most in baseball.

“They all, obviously, have more, more stuff,” Realmuto said. “But the simple fact that they all throw strikes with multiple pitches and can attack hitters in different ways inside the strike zone makes them really difficult to plan for and succeed at. Just throw different pitches in different counts and they’re all ready to hit whenever they want, that’s rare in this game and we have a lot of guys that can do it.

So yeah, maybe the Phillies are keeping it old school, compared to the best teams and players in franchise history, and with a way of thinking that puts them at the top of baseball.

They know, however, that every time they look past a packed house and toward the 1980 and 2008 World Series flags flying at Citizens Bank Park, a record start means nothing without a championship finish.

“It’s cool, but again, we all know what we want to accomplish,” reliever Matt Strahm said. “Other Phillies clubs have won the World Series and that’s the most impressive thing. So that’s what we want to do.

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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb