Philadelphia Phillies: 10 Reasons Not to Quit on This Season

The only thing keeping the Phillies' faint hopes of making the postseason alive is the relative mediocrity of the teams in front of them. Admittedly, when your team is 37-50 and looking bad doing it, you have to look hard for reasons to keep hoping. In this case, that means finding the flaws in the National League teams presently ahead of the Phillies. 

You can be sure of this: It is a very, very good thing that the Phillies are not in the American League, because they could never leapfrog enough of those teams to get home. In the National League, though?  Stranger things have happened...though not as strange as the Phillies catching the Nationals to win the division. That is not going to happen.

As for these next ten teams? Do you feel lucky?

Milwaukee Brewers

If you don't believe that the Phillies can get past the Milwaukee Brewers, you probably should just bail on this season. The Brewers are not very good, and as with the Phillies and Cole Hamels, the Brew Crew is seriously considering dealing an ace (Zack Greinke) to a contender and waving the white flag on 2012.  

But if the Phillies trade Hamels, they still have Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee. Without Greinke, the Brewers have Yovani Gallardo, a sore-elbowed Shaun Marcum and little else. Ryan Braun could hit 40-plus home runs for this team and it still would not crack .500. One down.

Miami Marlins

Prevailing wisdom had the Miami Marlins as the leading candidate to unseat the Phillies as leaders in the National League East. That is becoming less likely by the day. Jose Reyes is hitting 73 points below last season's batting average and went nearly a month without stealing a base.  

And now Giancarlo Stanton is out until at least mid-August or perhaps even September. Heath Bell's earned run average is closer to seven than six. This is another team that the Phillies probably should catch by season's end.

Arizona Diamondbacks

Injuries to Chris Young and Stephen Drew (you don't say, Stephen Drew got hurt?) have caused the Arizona Diamondbacks to play the living daylights out of Willie Bloomquist and Gerardo Parra, which probably was not how they drew it up.  

You wonder if they were counting on another near 20-20 season out of Ryan Roberts; if they were, they should stop, because it is not going to happen with him hitting .237 and slugging .352. The D'backs are so disillusioned with their team and their season that, per SB Nation, Justin Upton is apparently on the block; trading him to help the team seems like the equivalent of fixing a car by hitting it with a rocket-propelled grenade.

St. Louis Cardinals

Now that we have left the sub-.500 clubs behind, the Phillies' targets become harder and harder to find fault with. At least that is the case with the St. Louis Cardinals, who not only won the World Series last year as a wild card but still have the distinct pleasure of playing in the National League Central.  

Any time your schedule has a whole bunch of games with the Chicago Cubs and the Houston Astros on it, that is great news. You will win a lot of those games. The Phillies have to hope that one of the Cardinals, Pittsburgh Pirates or Cincinnati Reds crushes the other two en route to a 100-plus win season, leaving the runners-up in that division with fewer than 90 wins apiece.

New York Mets

You need to work pretty hard to convince a sane person that this overachieving New York Mets team will still be in the race in late September. Without R.A. Dickey, the Mets would be as hapless now as, well, the Phillies are.  

As an aside, you have to love the idea that per the New York Post, the Mets considered running Dickey out there every fourth day on short rest for the next 10 weeks. Sure, he's a Cy Young candidate on regular rest...so why not try to blow his elbow out as soon as possible? Only the Mets!

San Francisco Giants

Another recent world champion, only this far down on the list by virtue of trailing the Los Angeles Dodgers by half a game as of right now. Without question, though, this team is the favorite to win the National League West.  

The Giants pitch too well and hit just enough to be a dangerous team all the time. If you are unsure, ask the 2010 Phillies. They know. As with the NL Central, the Phillies should be rooting for the Giants to win 50 games from here to the end of the season, hanging as many losses as possible on the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Arizona Diamondbacks as they go.

Atlanta Braves

The Atlanta Braves just swept the Phillies in Philadelphia before the All-Star break. They are pretty clearly better than the Phillies right now—but the Braves are still going to have to deal with the baggage of the conclusion of their 2011 campaign. You remember.  

The Braves missed the playoffs on the last day of the season when they were swept at home by a team that had nothing to play for.  That team? The Phillies. So if the Phillies make a run and it's the Braves in their way at the end, the Phillies will have that to draw on.

Cincinnati Reds

The Cincinnati Reds are basically a fantasy team in a 20-team league. They have one transcendent talent (Joey Votto), one really good pitcher (Johnny Cueto), some underachieving guys their owner wishes would start playing better (Jay Bruce, Drew Stubbs), a steady numbers-creator (Brandon Phillips) and a couple of absolute question marks (Aroldis Chapman, Mat Latos). 

More than any team on this list, the Reds' ceiling is sweeping some unsuspecting team out of the World Series; their floor is coming unglued and will miss the playoffs altogether.

Los Angeles Dodgers

The question is not so much "can the Phillies catch the Los Angeles Dodgers" as it is "can the Dodgers get to October with nine major league players on the field?" Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier have missed a lot of games.

Dee Gordon is out until late August. Ted Lilly has not pitched since May 23. If the Dodgers cannot get healthy and stay healthy, they will not only lose their lead in the National League West, they might even have trouble holding off the Phillies.

Pittsburgh Pirates

Everybody loves to talk up the Pittsburgh Pirates now. Andrew McCutchen is Roberto Clemente 2.0. They raise the Jolly Roger when they win. They have been awful for so long that this season's success to date is like hearing speech from someone who has been in a silent coma for two decades.  

But didn't this happen last season? That ended terribly. This Pirate team needs James McDonald and Joel Hanrahan to remain elite, A.J. Burnett to remain confident and Erik Bedard to remain upright. That is asking a lot.