SAN FRANCISCO — Four bad Septembers in a row, starting with the 8-20 collapse in 2018, have prevented the Phillies from ending what is now the second-longest postseason drought in the Majors.
Is there a September curse? Is this team just incapable of a strong finish?
Poppycock, says interim manager Rob Thomson.
The publicans who ventured to South Street on Sunday night to quaff an ale or two might have a different answer after the Phillies started this September with three losses, all at Oracle Park, to a Giants team that had lost seven in a row and 11 of 13 before Thomson’s crew arrived.
The weekend sweep ended with Wilmer Flores hooking a misplaced Daniel Robertson slider just inside the left-field foul pole with two outs and a man on in the ninth for a 5-3 Giants walk-off win.
The loss ended a 1-5 trip through Arizona and San Francisco in which the Phillies struggled in all facets.
The Phillies were outscored 50-36, and their run total did not tell the entire story. They scored half their runs in one game at Arizona, their lone win. The starters pitched 24 innings and allowed 24 earned runs. The pitching staff walked way too many hitters on the trip, including Robertson’s pass to Giants outfielder Bryce Johnson to start the ninth inning of a 3-3 game.
Johnson owns one big league hit.
J.T. Realmuto provided a true spark with a three-run homer against John Brebbia to tie the game in the eighth, making him the sixth primary catcher in AL/NL history to hit at least 15 homers and steal 15 bases.
“I felt like after that home run we had the momentum. I thought we were going to win the game,” Realmuto said.
But Giants closer Camilo Doval shut the Phillies down in the ninth before Flores won it with his 17th home run.
“Things just aren’t clicking for us,” Robertson said. “Hopefully we’ll go back and really take this off-day to recharge and get ready for a good homestand, because we need to pick up the pace and we need to start winning games. We know that there’s only a certain amount of time left.”
Thirty games, to be exact, with the Phillies fortunate they did not lose more ground during the trip. When it began, they held the second of three Wild Card spots and had a comfy four-game lead over the Brewers for the final spot. The Phillies ended the week in that final spot, leapfrogged by the Padres, but still own a 2 1/2-game lead over a Milwaukee team that went 3-4 on the week.
“It’s been a frustrating week, but it’s just one week,” Thomson said. “Now we start a new week on Tuesday, and after an off-day we’ve got [Aaron] Nola going and we’ve just got to get back to our winning ways.”
The Phillies will host the bottom two teams in the NL East, the Marlins and Nationals.
If they don’t start winning on this homestand, the specter of Septembers past will hover over Citizens Bank Park.
The Phillies had a shot to reach the playoffs in each of the past four seasons. They even led the East in mid-August 2018 before that 8-20 September. In the three subsequent years they went 12-16, 13-17 and 14-16 to ensure they would extend a playoff drought that goes back to 2011.
If the Mariners reach the playoffs as expected this season, the Phillies will own the Majors’ longest drought.
Thomson brought up the notion of a curse or some easier-to-explain September failures on his own Sunday morning — mainly to pooh-pooh them and argue that his team should ignore any such talk.
The Canadian-born skipper used the example of his favorite NHL team to make his point. The Toronto Maple Leafs have not advanced beyond the first round of the playoffs for the past 17 seasons. Thomson said that tying the years together “doesn’t make any sense to me because it’s just different players, different people, different coaches. So why even go there?”
The Phillies’ 8-20 September was two managers ago. Bryce Harper was a National. Realmuto was a Marlin. Alec Bohm had just been drafted out of Wichita State.
Thomson made his point. But are they buying it in South Philly?