How will the Phillies fare after London? They don’t know, but it’s not for a lack of planning.

Will returning from overseas be a speed bump in the Phillies’ historic start? Dave Dombrowski and Co. are drawing on their experiences with the Red Sox in 2019 to try to make a smooth adjustment.

Bryce Harper and the Phillies return from London with the best record in baseball through Sunday.Read moreYong Kim / Staff Photographer

by Scott Lauber

Published June 10, 2024, 10:32 a.m. ET

LONDON — The last time Dave Dombrowski took a team overseas for a two-game series, it was a first.

In 2019, the Red Sox and Yankees went where no MLB teams had gone before, specifically to Europe for the inaugural London Series. And because baseball players are rooted in a rinse-and-repeat routine for six months, there were questions about the effect of transatlantic flights, a five-hour time difference, back-to-back days off before the series, and other unusual disruptions.

“A lot of that,” Dombrowski said, “at that time, we just did not know.”

Five years later, there isn’t nearly as much guessing. Phillies players were given explicit guidelines through an app on their phones for their four-day pond-hop to London, down to hour-by-hour breakdowns of when to sleep on the plane and how to proceed when they touched down Thursday morning in Britain and Sunday night in Boston.

After two months of not getting tripped up by the competition en route to a 45-20 start — the best record in baseball through Sunday — they were trying to avoid stumbling over the schedule.

“We’ve talked about this for weeks,” said Dombrowski, Phillies’ president of baseball operations. “We’ve handled the travel aspect of it, the sleep aspect of it, the dietary aspect of it, the supplement aspect of it. There’s notes sent every single day from our nutritionist.

“Now, people still have to follow it. But we were very, very thorough in that regard. You leave no stone unturned.”

Dombrowski drew on the 2019 Red Sox experience and described this trip as “a much more knowledgeable, comfortable routine.” It helped, too, that head athletic trainer Paul Buchheit also worked for Boston then. They have done this before. They saw what worked and what didn’t.

And with input from other departments, notably director of strength and conditioning and nutrition Morgan Gregory, they developed a list of best practices.

To wit: On the flight to London, players were advised to take advantage of lie-flat seats on what manager Rob Thomson described as a “deluxe” plane and go to sleep, then stay awake for as long as possible once they arrived. Many players said they stuck to the plan. Bryce Harper sampled the food at Borough Market; Bryson Stott and Kyle Schwarber checked out the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. The team arranged for a Tower of London tour.

Other players were less touristy. Zack Wheeler said he didn’t do much sightseeing. Ranger Suárez claimed he slept most of the day Thursday.

Regardless, the Phillies were sharp in a series-opening 7-2 rout of the Mets on Saturday night. They had 3-0 and 4-3 leads Sunday before José Alvarado gave up three runs in the ninth inning of a 6-5 loss.

But a split with the Mets is still better than the 2019 Red Sox, who allowed 29 runs in two high-scoring losses. Maybe they were jet-lagged. More likely, they were still shaking off a World Series hangover from the year before and facing a Yankees team that blazed to a 54-28 start.

Say this for those Red Sox: They weren’t slow to adapt upon their return to North American soil. They stayed on the road in Toronto and Detroit and went 5-1, averaging nine runs per game.

The question for the Phillies: How will they fare coming out of London, with three games in Boston and three in Baltimore?

“I think it’ll be a little bit easier,” Thomson said. “Because we [were scheduled to] get into Boston at 11 o’clock at night [Sunday], so they can get right to sleep and get back on the Eastern time zone.”

At least that was the plan. The Phillies left London after Sunday’s game, and although the westbound flight to the U.S. is about an hour longer, the recommendation was for them to stay awake and sleep once they checked into the hotel in Boston.

“Play cards,” Thomson said. “A lot of cards.”

The level of detail in the Phillies’ planning isn’t unique. The Cubs and Cardinals undertook similar research before their London series last season and experienced struggles when they returned. The Cubs got swept at Wrigley Field by the Phillies, while the Cardinals lost two of three at home against the Astros.

“Coming back, it’s difficult,” said Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol. “I know you get a day off on the way back, but your body responding the next couple series is tough. You plan for it as much as you can and do everything possible, but it’s not an easy stretch.

“We prepared for it. But our bodies are our jobs. You’re not going back to the bank and just having to be awake from 9 to 5. The wear and tear, it’s real. It’s a difficult little stretch, and you hope you come out of it OK.”

It’s most difficult on the pitchers. Wheeler, for instance, will start Tuesday night at Fenway Park having not pitched since last Monday. He prefers four days’ rest and grudgingly deals with it when he gets five or six. This time, he will have seven. Ditto for Cristopher Sánchez and Aaron Nola on Wednesday and Thursday.

It isn’t ideal. The Phillies gave Wheeler and Nola the option of traveling to London or staying home. Both chose London. Wheeler threw two bullpen sessions last week to account for the extra rest. Mostly, he tried to approach it like another All-Star break.

“Yeah, I like pitching every five days, but at the same time, it’s good to have these little breaks every once in a while just for the arm and the body,” Wheeler said. “I’ve had long breaks before. You can mess around with what you do just by how you feel and what’s working or not working right now, volume-wise. Just kind of go off that.”

Dombrowski said the idle time — three days off in a span of five days — may prove more challenging for the relievers, who are most effective when they pitch regularly. And if Sunday is any indication, some rust has formed.

Gregory Soto made his first appearance in a week and didn’t retire any of the three batters that he faced. Alvarado gave up two hits and two walks and hit a batter, and later conceded that he struggled with his command, though he didn’t use the added rest as an excuse.

“We don’t have to think about that,” Alvarado said. “I felt fine today. I look at it as it wasn’t my day today. Something with my command.”

Maybe it was one of those days. Or maybe it was a symptom of the most unusual road trip the Phillies have had since at least the 14-game, five-city odyssey to close the 2022 regular season and begin the playoffs.

Will it be a speed bump in their historic start?

“I don’t know, to be totally honest with you,” Thomson said. “It’s going to be tiring, and it’s going to be tiring coming back. But we’re going to have to deal with it and keep playing. They’re not going to cancel games for us or suspend games for us.”