Phillies-Haters 'Round The Nation Now Eating Their Words

PHILADELPHIA, PA — Four years ago, no one believed in Bryce Harper's contract. As recently as late September, no one believed in the Phillies young core. Two weeks ago, no one believed the Phillies could beat the St. Louis Cardinals. One week ago, no one believed the Phillies could beat the Atlanta Braves.

Imagine what they won't believe tomorrow.

Now, Bryce Harper has a second MVP award and has reestablished himself as one of the best players on the planet. And the Phillies are in the National League Championship Series, four wins away from the World Series.

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Along their bumpy, 11-year road back to the postseason, there were plenty of doubters. Here are some of the most glorious, hilarious, ice-cold takes, smashed into golden oblivion like so much south Philadelphia dirt under a Rhys Hoskins post-home run bat slam.

Keith Hernandez

New York Mets announcer Keith Hernandez drew some attention to himself this summer in the midst of an apparent midseason celebration of his team's early success. He said he no longer wanted to call games against the Phillies, who were in playoff position at the time, because they weren't "up to it" on the fundamentals of the game.

The Mets, who somehow managed to yet again collapse after a 10-game division lead over the Braves, were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs by the San Diego Padres.

Now, the Mets and Braves are watching the playoffs from home, while the Phillies and Padres face off in the National League Championship Series.

Hernandez, who broadcasts games for millions, made his Twitter profile private after the Mets were eliminated. He waited a week. And then he hopped on the Phillies bandwagon. "This is not the same Phillies team I criticized earlier in the season," he said Saturday, praising Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski and general manager Sam Fuld. "I'll be rooting for the Phillies the rest of the way."

The Ringer's Ben Lindbergh

A senior editor at The Ringer and MLB Network analyst, Lindbergh's summary judgement of the Phillies before the 2022 season began was simple and harsh. Citing a host of statistical evidence from Fangraphs, Lindbergh called the Phillies his "flop" pick for 2022, and said they probably would be his "flop" for 2023, too.

"By adding Castellanos and Kyle Schwarber to what was already MLB’s worst defensive team, the Phillies have reached a level of defense so putrid that it’s tough to win no matter what you do well," he wrote. "Dave Dombrowski may have misunderstood the assignment: 'Universal DH' doesn’t mean you have to have a DH at every position."

The beauty of Lindbergh's comments: Castellanos had an abysmal year, by his own star-level standards, and while Schwarber led the National League in home runs, his defense was subpar. The Phillies still persevered.

There are statistical reasons: players like Alec Bohm and Bryson Stott made big improvements defensively. The Phillies got a Gold Glove caliber center fielder at the trade deadline in Brandon Marsh. They already have the best catcher in baseball behind the dish. Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola strike out so many batters that they make the fielding behind them less crucial than a quick glance at a roster might say. But the bigger reason, the reason the Phillies are where they are, while the Mets and Dodgers and Braves are standing in the corner watching, is the ineffable and non-arithmetical baseball magic.

It's why Oakland Athletics have never won a World Series and "Field of Dreams" is a better depiction of the essence of postseason success than "Moneyball"

By the way, the statistical models at Fangraphs had the Phillies missing the postseason for much of the spring, and predicted clear victories for both the Cardinals and Braves in the Wild Card and NLDS.

Twitter blogger Dan Clark

Clark's page is filled with opinionated and often outlandish predictions, and the Phillies have long been a target of his myopic prognostications. Start with this missive from Feb. 2021, about 9 months before Bryce Harper won his second MVP award:

"Roses are red
Violets are blue
Bryce Harper is overhyped
In fact, the Phillies are too."

While Harper became the most underrated athlete in the world on the backs of comments like that, Clark went on to predict the Phillies would be a .500 team, time and time again. His latest comment criticized the Phillies and Padres for celebrating their division series wins, seemingly lacking the context that both victories were wild upsets by teams who have not been in the postseason for a very long time.

The Mets Again

There was apparently significant confidence that the aforementioned Mets collapse, seemingly an every-other-year phenomona, would not recur in 2022.

The team put out division champion "The East is Ours" t-shirts for sale in the first days of October. The Mets were promptly swept by the Braves to end the regular season, knocking them out of first place and granting the Braves the division title. The Braves were then beaten by the Phillies.

The East is Philadelphia's.

Ken Rosenthal

One of the nation's preeminent sportswriters, Rosenthal never cast the aspersions on the Phillies that so many of his contemporaries did. Rather, he took a more measured approach in a late-May column days before the managerial switch: "Firing Joe Girardi Won't Solve Phillies Problems."

In the column, he made a series of actually pretty good points about the state of the Phillies, noting that underlying structural issues that remain to this day (defense, bullpen insecurity, organizational depth) would not be solved by Girardi's departure.

In a nuanced follow up that's well worth the read, Rosenthal admits he was wrong about Philly and goes into detail about changes made by Rob Thomson and the resiliency at the core of this group that made a playoff push largely without Bryce Harper or Jean Segura.