Last week, the Phillies established themselves as a bunch of losers. It doesn’t matter that they’ve since won four out of five games and have the second-best record in baseball; By once again getting trounced in Citi Field, the Phillies showed that they’re a collection of un-clutch losers who always come up small in big games and are destined for another loss in the playoffs.
We’ve seen the team come up short in the playoffs every year because the offense has gone quiet for extended periods and the pitching has faltered in key spots. Based on what we’ve seen this season, is there any reason to expect anything different come October?
Wouldn’t it be nice if the Phillies were more like those other teams out there? You know, the ones that don’t ever lose big games, and always win in the playoffs.
Like… the Dodgers! By virtue of being the defending champions, the Dodgers have proven that they can come through when it counts. Except…
Prior to 2024, aside from the asterisk-affixed COVID season of 2020, the Dodgers made getting upset in the playoffs into an artform. It felt like every season, despite having what looked like the best roster, they would fall to a lesser team.
What about the champions from the year before? In 2023, the Texas Rangers went on a playoff power binge, slugging their way to a title. Obviously, the core of that team had what it takes to win…which made it that much more surprising when they missed the playoffs the following season.
In actuality, it wasn’t all that surprising. 2023 is the only season in the last eight in which the Rangers made the playoffs. (And 2025 isn’t looking great either.)
The Rangers played the Diamondbacks in the World Series. Remember how gritty and resilient those Diamondbacks looked that season? Apparently, that was just a one year thing, because the Diamondbacks also missed the playoffs the next year.
As we sadly remember, the Houston Astros won the World Series in 2022. But in the years before that, they dealt with repeated playoff failures that had people saying that they could only win by cheating. (And they’ve gone back to choking since then.)
The 2021 Atlanta Braves established themselves as winners by taking down three playoff opponents with better regular season records en route to the World Series. So, it was quite surprising that those “winners” suffered upsets to the Phillies the following two years in the NLDS.
The core of the 2019 Washington Nationals was loaded with talent, but they had failed to win even a single playoff round before that season. Despite that long history of failure, they broke through to win the World Series. Perhaps the key was allowing Bryce Harper to leave, because he’s proven to be a playoff choker (as long as you ignore his many big postseason hits, including perhaps the most clutch home run in Phillies history).
What’s the lesson to be learned here? It seems to be that “clutch” is extremely non-sticky. Teams are chokers until they win, and then they can easily go back to being chokers again. I don’t know if the playoffs are truly a “crapshoot,” but it also seems clear that there’s an element of randomness involved. Playoff success appears to hinge far more on health, matchups, and timing rather than an innate quality of clutchness.
If you think the Phillies won’t win the World Series, you’re probably right, because it’s extremely difficult to win the World Series. You need to get through three or four rounds and hope your best players don’t go into slumps or face disadvantageous matchups. But if you think that the Phillies’ past playoff failures portends future failures because they’ve proven to be losers who don’t have what it takes, history has shown that some teams don’t have what it takes, right up until they do.
