By Evan Macy
Copyright phillyvoice
The Phillies aren’t playing real baseball games this week. They earned a break.
Thanks to their 96-66 record, the second best in the National League, they receive a direct bye past the Wild Card round and into the NLDS, which will kick off Saturday at Citizens Bank Park.
Last year they had a bye, too. And they were victims of their own success.
“It’s an advantage if you win the first series and disadvantage if you don’t,” Phillies GM Dave Dombrowski told media members prior to a full team workout Tuesday afternoon.
It’s impossible to say whether their four-game NLDS loss to the Mets after having this same week off was why they had an early exit in 2024. But it definitely played a role.
In the two postseasons prior, the Phillies had much deeper runs making the playoffs as a Wild Card team and getting hot with runs to the NLCS and World Series, respectively. Since the league expanded to its current playoff format in 2022, bye-week National League teams have combined to go 1-5. In the AL, it’s 5-1. Bye week teams are .500 when they are back on the field — not exactly an advantage.
However, in 2024 the Dodgers (a potential opponent for the Phillies in the NLDS this year) had the bye and won the World Series. The team they defeated, the Yankees, had a bye too.
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“The biggest advantage is, you don’t have to go out there and play a three game series where anything can happen,” Dombrowski said, shortly before the first three-game Wild Card game began in Cleveland.
“I think it’s an advantage in the sense that there are some guys like [Trea] Turner, it gives them more time to get ready and you can set your rotation up as you want when you might not have been able to to that.”
Turner played five innings in the regular season finale Sunday after missing a few weeks with a hamstring injury.
Health and preparedness — those are the main ways having a team this good can help. If the Phillies are meant to win a World Series, they’ll find a way to use it to gain an edge.
“We’ll look to use it to our advantage,” Dombrowski continued. “Today they’re going to work on fundamentals, tomorrow will be kind of a fun day here but also a business day for our guys to see some good pitching against one another.”
The Phillies are holding full team workouts all week and an intra-squad scrimmage open to fans on Wednesday night, something they did not do in 2024.
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