⚾ Baseball Bytes: Here Come The Phillies

Philly has taken every possible path to contention — except perhaps this one. Plus, a new Royals ace, and a quick chart on Juan Soto's power outage.

Welcome to Baseball Bytes^¹ — a column in which I point out several byte-sized pieces of information that jumped out to me from my various baseball spreadsheets. If you’ve noticed a Baseball Byte of your own, email me and I’ll feature it in a future column!

⚾ A Philly Fork in the Road

Kyle Schwarber of the Philadelphia Phillies bats against the Athletics in the top of the six inning of a major league baseball game at Sutter Health Park on May 23, 2025 in Sacramento. (Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)

The Bryce Harper-era Philadelphia Phillies have been fascinating to watch evolve over the years. At first, they had to tolerate a series of mediocre seasons even as Harper’s old team, the division-rival Washington Nationals, won the World Series without him. Then they had the turmoil of the Joe Girardi era, which ended with the former championship-winning manager being fired in mid-2022… at which point they shrugged off defensive doubts and finally found their own World Series form (before falling short versus Houston in the Fall Classic).

Next, they salvaged a bad start in 2023 to look like one of history’s most dominant postseason teams… only to completely fall apart in the NLCS against the heavy underdog Diamondbacks. And then last year, the Phils broke with their tradition of poor starts to produce one of the best first-halves in franchise (if not MLB) history… only to fizzle to a 33-33 record in the second half, and lose to the bitter rival New York Mets in the Division Series.

Which all brings us to 2025. As of Wednesday, the Phillies have taken a path more like that of the 2024 edition of the club — hot to begin the year — rather than the catch-up mode they found themselves in early in both 2022 and 2023. Philly’s 35-19 record is 16 games over .500, a bit behind the +22 mark they had through 54 games of 2024, but still their eighth-best mark at this stage of a season in all of franchise history:²

But if recent history is any guide, what happens next will be what really defines the season in South Philly. Will they flatten out like last year? Or keep climbing, and finally combine a hot start with a strong finish?