With their 96th victory on Sunday, the Philadelphia Phillies completed their best regular season in 14 years, and fifth highest win total in franchise history. They won the National League East by 13 games, and while much of the credit for that can go to the collapse of the Braves and Mets, that ties the 2011 team for their biggest division margin ever.
It should be difficult to count 2025 as anything but an extremely successful season. Yet, based on how some fans were acting on talk radio and social
media throughout the year, you might have thought that the Phillies were a massive disappointment, and were on the brink of collapse the whole time.
There seem to be three main categories of fans who contribute to this mindset:
1. The Doomers
While I skew towards the optimistic end of the fan spectrum, there are some fans who are always convinced that the team is on the brink of collapse. The Phillies could win nine straight games, and as soon as they fall behind in game ten, they’re quick to announce that the team is about to fall apart and a losing streak is imminent.
I get it to an extent. Sports fandom is generally an exercise in frustration. Only one team can win the World Series, so the season is going to end in some level of failure for 29 fanbases. And history has not been especially kind for Phillies fans in that regard. Older fans have only seen the team win it all twice, fans under 50 have only seen it once, and the youngest fans have never witnessed a Phillies parade down Broad Street.
Maybe you just like to always be right, and know that by predicting failure, the odds are in your favor. Maybe the pessimism is simply a defense mechanism since you can be disappointed if you never get your hopes up. But to me, it feels like an awful existence always expecting the worst to happen.
2. The football brains
While the city is obviously passionate about its baseball team, ultimately, Philadelphia is a football city. And with the local football team having lost only one game – and a fluky game at that – over the past year, it’s easy to see why a football mentality has overtaken some fans’ brains.
But you can’t treat a 162 game season like a 17 game one. Every baseball team, even very good ones like the Phillies, are going to go through some rough stretches.
Remember when the Phillies lost five in a row in late April, including a sweep at the hands of the Mets? Or how about in June when they had another five-game skid, that saw them lose three in a row to the Pirates? There was that series in Houston when they scored one run in three games, and yet another sweep in Citi Field in late August.
After each of those stretches, there were people (almost gleefully) declaring the Phillies to be in BIG TROUBLE, and that they’d be lucky to even capture a Wild Card berth. As it turned out, the Phillies were able to overcome those rough patches to win 96 games and the NL East.
Of course, some fans will tell you that doesn’t matter because…
3. It’s all about the postseason
For some, the regular season is simply a precursor to the real season, and unless you win the World Series, the season has been a failure. Some of the Doomers also fall into this category as in their eyes, every regular season loss – and even some of the wins – expose a fatal flaw that will doom the team in the playoffs.
They’re convinced that nothing has fundamentally changed with the team from the past few years, which means they’re destined to come up short again. (I wrote about how past failures are not necessarily good predictors of the future.)
I understand that the World Series should be the goal for every team, as you don’t get a big shiny trophy and a championship parade for having a nice regular season. But does that mean we can’t enjoy the journey along the way? The regular season is six months long. If you can’t enjoy that because you’re worried what is going to happen in a five or seven game series, then what’s even the point of being a fan?
We got to witness in one of the greatest power hitting seasons in team history. We got to see a Phillie win a batting title for the first time in 67 years. We got to see a homegrown pitcher take the next step and become one of the best in baseball. And we got to see the Phillies come away victorious 96 times. If you weren’t able to enjoy any of that because you are convinced that they’re going to come up short in October, that feels like a sad way to spend half the year.
Everyone – myself included – will be disappointed if the Phillies come up short in their quest for another championship. But we’ve got a few days until the NLDS, so before we get caught up in the drama of the postseason, why not take a minute to recognize and appreciate one of the best seasons in franchise history?
