August 29, 2023
The Phillies have been hitting home runs like crazy through the month of August, have won four straight and eight of their last 11 over the past two weeks, and are steadily separating themselves from the rest of the pack for the top spot in the NL Wild Card race.
The pitching, for the most part, has looked the best it's been all season. Bryce Harper has rediscovered his power stroke, while the back half of the order has been offering opponents no solace. And Trea Turner, after struggling all year, has gone on a late-summer tear and is finally looking like the $300 million shortstop Philadelphia had been waiting for.
The Phillies are hot, and at this point in the season, that's trouble for the rest of the NL playoff picture.
Turner knows it.
Said the recently resurgent shortstop after Monday night's 6-4 win over the Angels (via MLB.com's Todd Zolecki):
“If you had to pick a World Series winner every year, I always pick a Wild Card team, just because you’ve got to play really well for the last month, two weeks, whatever it is, then continue that in the postseason...You see it year after year. It doesn’t always happen. But year after year, there’s a Wild Card team that goes really far in the postseason. It’s really dangerous.
“The year [Washington] won it in [in 2019], we were that Wild Card team. Wild Card teams are scary. Those teams are dangerous, and we feel like we’re a dangerous team. We’ve been playing good. We’ve just got to keep doing what we’re doing.” [MLB.com]
The rest of the Phillies know this just as well too, since most of the roster is only a year removed from having caused that same postseason chaos.
After just backing into the playoffs with the newly added third Wild Card spot, the 2022 Phils caught fire and went on a miracle run that took them right through the Cardinals, the defending champion Braves, and an upstart Padres team on the way to the World Series before the juggernaut Houston Astros stopped them short.
And through it all, South Philadelphia was rocking, Citizens Bank Park was one of the loudest places in the country – and the absolute place to be – and the baseball world was caught completely by storm.
After 11 years away, Red October had returned, better than ever. And now Turner and the Phils want to make sure it doesn't go anywhere anytime soon.
And with a 4.5-game cushion in the NL Wild Card race entering Tuesday night's second game of a three-game set against the Angels, and with a major league-leading 52 home runs hit this month alone, they look well on their way to it.
Anyway, if we're talking wild cards, there's a very obvious clip to end this on.
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