It is tempting to use a team’s September play to try and project how they’ll fare in October. Especially when that September was as near-disastrous as the one the Phillies just had.
In a way, the Phillies’ September slide has taken some of the pressure off. Between their 10-14 month and their 1-4 final five games (narrowly avoiding an all-time collapse on the last day of the season), they have preemptively dampened many fans’ World Series hopes. The expectations entering the playoffs are now the lowest they’ve been since 2022. Incidentally, the 2022 postseason was the Phillies’ most successful of this five-year run so far.
But in another sense, the recent skid has only amplified the pressure. It has given credence to fears of a regressing offense and, perhaps, a closing contention window. The past week has served as a stark reminder that making the playoffs is never a given, and that each shot this group takes at a World Series ring may be its last.
The Phillies’ past October failures have ensured that even when there aren’t expectations, there is pressure.
In the wake of playoff heartbreak the last four seasons, it would be comforting to many fans to know how the games “should” turn out, before they’re actually played. If a team’s regular season – or even its September – held clues to its postseason fate, fans could decide in advance whether they were worth the emotional investment or not. Whether they were worth believing in this time.
The reality, however, is that there are no clues. Baseball history is littered with the October defeats of teams worth believing in, as well as the October triumphs of teams long dismissed.
Take those 2022 Phillies, for instance. A 14-17 finish to the season nearly doomed their playoff hopes entirely. They avoided a collapse in the final week only through some timely wins against a 55-win Nationals team, along with the Brewers simultaneously losing three of four at home to the Miami Marlins. This 87-75 team by all measures hobbled into the playoffs. Yet they nevertheless proceeded to go 9-2 across the first three rounds once they got there, earning Philadelphia its first NL pennant since 2009.
In each of the following three years, the Phillies’ regular season record improved. Not only that, but their Septembers improved as well, from 16-13 in 2023, to 15-11 in 2024, to 17-8 in 2025. Each time, October heartbreak followed, and in the latter two cases, the Phillies failed to win a single postseason series. If regular season performance – or even a hot September – were any indication of playoff success, this has not been reflected by the Phillies in recent years.
Past Phillies contenders have borne similar unpredictability. The 2007 Phillies – who went 17-11 in September and finished 13-4 to end a 14-year playoff drought – were swept by the Colorado Rockies in that year’s NLDS. The next year, the Phillies went 17-8 in September en route to their second World Series championship. But two years after that, an electric 23-7 finish did nothing to save the Phillies from falling to Cody Ross and the Giants in the 2010 NLCS.
To go back even farther, the 1993 Phillies went 15-15 from September 1 onward. Then they beat the Atlanta Braves in the NLCS in six games. The 1983 Phillies finished the year hot, like the championship team three years earlier. But they then faced the Dodgers in the NLCS, after having gone 1-11 against the Los Angeles Dodgers in the regular season. No matter: The Phillies went 3-1 in the series to clinch another pennant.
The Phillies have reached the playoffs in all manners of ways throughout their history, but if there is any pattern to the successes and failures, it has never been identified. This is true of the 29 other MLB teams as well, the randomness of October only having become more apparent as playoffs have expanded to allow more teams.
The 2023 Texas Rangers went 18-24 to end the season, then won their first championship. Their World Series opponent was a Diamondbacks team that went 84-78 with a -15 run differential before winning three consecutive playoff series, including an NLDS sweep of a 100-win Dodgers team.
In 2006, Dave Dombrowski’s own Detroit Tigers went 19-31 to end the season, blowing a 10-game division lead in the process. They limped into the ALDS against a New York Yankees team that was 18-12 since September 1, and dropped Game 1 at Yankee Stadium. Then they won their next seven games in a row, eliminating both the Yankees and the Oakland A’s en route to their first World Series since 1984. There, the Tigers were ultimately defeated in five games – by an 83-win Cardinals team.
The St. Louis Cardinals went 3-9 to end that hot-and-cold 2006 regular season, nearly blowing a seven-game lead in a mediocre NL Central in the final two weeks. They clinched a playoff spot the final weekend of the season, but it took every bit of the cushion they’d previously built, along with their rivals’ late stumbles against teams with nothing to play for. Then they won the World Series, their first in 24 years.
These 83-win Cardinals completed a mission that had eluded them in recent years. In five of the previous six seasons, they had suffered October heartbreak despite fielding stronger rosters, including teams the previous two years that had won 105 and 100 games, respectively. There is no sensical reason why the 2006 Cardinals should have succeeded where those teams had failed. But they did.
The moral of the story is that, when it comes to the MLB postseason, there is no moral. There is no rhyme or reason to what unfolds, or why. Which is what makes it so exciting.
For a team that has had a stellar regular season, this reality can be frightening. After all, the most talented, consistent teams would like to believe that their talent and consistency mean something when the weather gets colder and the lights get brighter. And if they win the World Series, they’ll probably conclude that it did mean something after all.
Except, they may not win.
But, on the other hand – for a team that has had an up-and-down year, a team not quite as dynamic as it once was, a team that squeaked into the dance at the last possible moment, a team that has grown familiar with disappointment – the truly random nature of playoff baseball can be cause for tremendous hope. It’s all just a matter of perspective.
