subject: Father Time And The Philadelphia Phillies [print this page] There's never been a better time to be a Philadelphia Phillies fan.
The Phillies, after all, are the losingest franchise in major league history. They are the oldest continuous, one-name, one-city franchise in all of professional American sports, dating to 1883. They joined the National League at that time and won just two pennants in their first 97 seasons. In between, the Phillies went on one of the most sustained runs of futility in professional sports history: From 1918 through 1948, the Phillies had 30 losing seasons in 31 years.
Those teams bear no resemblance to the modern-day Phillies, who followed their 2008 world championship with another World Series appearance in 2009. If they hadn't lost to the Giants in the NLCS last season, they would have become the first NL team since World War II to win three pennants in a row. And this year, they're better than ever. At 85-46, they're on pace to win a franchise-record 105 games, a mark reached by only five NL teams in the past 65 years.
The Phillies' blueprint for success can be summed up in three words: Acquire elite pitching. Two winters ago general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. traded three top prospects to the Toronto Blue Jays for Roy Halladay. Last summer he sent left-hander J.A. Happ and two second-tier prospects to the Houston Astros for Roy Oswalt. This winter he signed Cliff Lee as a free agent. Add them to emerging homegrown ace Cole Hamels and the Phillies had assembled the most heralded rotation since the glory years of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz in Atlanta.
Great rotations in the spring don't always pitch that way in the summer, but this one has. While Oswalt has struggled with a bad back this season, Halladay, Lee, and Hamels all rank in the top eight in the NL in ERA. The Phillies seem likely to finish this season as the first team since the 1985 Dodgers to have three starting pitchers with ERAs under 2.80.
The next season, the Phillies finished at .500, and the franchise returned to the playoffs just once between 1984 and 2007.
History will not necessarily repeat itself. So long as Halladay and Lee and Hamels are competing with each other for Cy Young Awards, the Phillies are almost guaranteed to be competitive. But for a team on the verge of its greatest season ever, the future is murky at best. The Phillies have climbed to the top of the mountain. There might be a cliff up ahead.
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