The Phillies are 87-73 with two games left and they are in real danger of missing the playoffs. The Diamondbacks are 86-74, have won six straight, and hold the tiebreaker.
Philadelphia has scored two runs total in its last three games. They have not hit a home run since Tuesday. This is a collapse happening in slow motion on national television.
The Tiebreaker Is the Killer
Here is the detail that makes Philadelphia’s position so precarious. The season series between the two teams finished 3-3, which pushes the tiebreaker to intradivision record. Arizona went 32-18 in the NL West, a .640 clip. The Phillies went 28-24 in the NL East, .538.
Arizona wins any tie. That means the Phillies cannot simply match the Diamondbacks over the final weekend, they have to stay ahead. A one-game lead with two to play, against a team playing its best baseball of the year, is not a comfortable cushion.
The Offense Has Stopped Working
Philadelphia ranks second-lowest in runs scored in September and sits among the teams with the fewest home runs this month. For a lineup built on power, that is a total systems failure at the worst possible time.
Luis Arraez’s left ankle sprain makes it worse, removing the one hitter in the group whose value does not depend on slugging. When a power offense goes cold and its contact hitter goes down in the same week, there is no version of the lineup that works.
Mike Axisa of CBS Sports put it bluntly: “The Phillies are on the verge of a horrific collapse, and the D-backs a miraculous comeback.” Philadelphia has also carried a 5.23 bullpen ERA while scoring 3.68 runs per game in September, which is a formula for losing close games repeatedly.
Arizona Has Been Overwhelming
The Diamondbacks are averaging eight runs per game during their six-game streak. Nolan Arenado hit his 30th home run Friday and has four homers in five games. A team that was an afterthought in early September is now scoring at a rate nobody in the National League can match.
They close with two against San Diego. The Phillies get two against Tampa Bay.
What Makes This So Bad for Philadelphia
Missing the playoffs at 88 or 89 wins after leading a wild-card spot into the final weekend is the kind of failure that follows a franchise into the offseason. It raises questions about the roster construction, the manager, and whether a lineup this dependent on home runs can be trusted in October at all.
And even if they hold on, the way they got there matters. A team limping into the wild-card round having scored two runs in three games is not a team anyone should expect to advance.
Two Games
The Phillies need to score. That is the entire assignment. Beat Tampa Bay once and they probably survive, because Arizona still has to handle a Padres team with its own reasons to win.
Lose both and Philadelphia becomes the answer to a trivia question nobody in that clubhouse wants to be.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.