Trea Turner knows what it’s like to ride a Wild Card berth all the way to a World Series championship.
He was a member of the 2019 Washington Nationals, who famously started the season 19-31, won 93 games in the regular season and slayed the behemoth Houston Astros in Game 7 of the World Series.
Since the Wild Card was introduced in 1995, 14 teams that did not win their division have reached the World Series. The 2022 Phillies were team No. 14 and if this year goes as planned, the 2023 Phillies hope to become the eighth Wild Card winner to win the World Series.
The Phillies dug themselves in too deep of a hole early on in the season to catch the Atlanta Braves for the NL East, so they’re going to have to follow a similar path as they did last year in order to get to where they want to be.
It helps to have the offense clicking on all cylinders this late in the year.
Turner’s go-ahead home run in the fifth inning of Monday’s win, his second of the game, was the 52nd Phillies home run in the month of August, which is a new franchise record for a single calendar month. Turner, who has put his early struggles behind him in August, has seven home runs this month. He is batting .313 with a .606 slugging percentage in August.
You can argue that quite a few Phillies have had a better month than Turner. Bryce Harper, Nick Castellanos, and Kyle Schwarber all have at least eight home runs in August. According to Elias Sports Bureau, it’s the first time in Phillies history that three or more players have at least eight home runs in a single calendar month.
The sheer volume of offensive production this month has been impressive, but the timing of it all might be even more encouraging.
The most dominant club in the regular season is not always the last team standing. It’s all about peaking at the right time, which is why Turner believes Wild Card teams like the Phillies can be the most dangerous in the postseason.
“If you had to pick a World Series winner every year, I always kind of pick a Wild Card team because you gotta play really well for the last month, two weeks, whatever it is, and continue that in the postseason,” Turner said after Monday’s win. “You see it year after year. It doesn’t always happen, but year after year, there’s a Wild Card team that goes really far in the postseason and is really dangerous. In the year we won in Washington, we were that Wild Card team.
“Wild Card teams are scary. Not to say that anybody can’t win it, obviously. To play in the Wild Card, you have to be playing really well at the end of the year. Those teams are dangerous and we feel like we’re a dangerous team. We’ve been playing good. We just got to keep doing what we’re doing and keep going.”
The Phillies are slowly building a more comfortable lead for the first Wild Card spot in the National League. One bad week could tank their chances of securing that top spot, but as of Monday night, the Phillies have a four-game lead over the Chicago Cubs for home-field advantage in a best-of-three Wild Card Series.
And judging by the way the team has played over the last few weeks, the Phillies may be the most formidable Wild Card team in the field by a wide margin.
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