It’s time for the Phillies to finish their business ... ASAP

Remember when everyone was panicking about the Phillies?

It’s a good thing we have sports as outlet for our angst. Part of me thinks we need hitless nights and bullpen blowups so we don’t worry so much about the real world. Yelling at the Phillies is better than yelling at traffic. Unless you are someone who yells at traffic about the Phillies.

Hey, I get it. We’ve all been there. Why is it so hard to be a professional athlete in the city of Philadelphia? Because tickets are still cheaper than therapy.

In fairness, the Phillies don’t make it easy. They are good at baseball, and they will make you suffer for it. The decision to move the first pitch to 6:40 p.m. wasn’t made for business reasons. It was empathy. If they are going to make you sweat until the end, the least they can do is give you some extra time to dry before hitting the sheets.

Believe it or not, there are good baseball teams that win games without hitting would-be doubles off of umpires or dropping would-be outs over the center-field fence. Tolstoy may have been right when he said that all happy families are alike. As for baseball teams, the Phillies have a way of making happiness feel awfully strange.

Therein lies the point, I suppose. It’s an important one, and it was missed by those who fretted about that four-game losing streak in the middle of August.

» READ MORE: Phillies vs. Mets in September — and it matters for the first time since 2008. Let the fun begin.

This is who the Phillies are. They demand some level of trust in who they eventually will be.

They don’t make it easy. On Aug. 13 they were 17-24 in their last 41, 32-36 since their torrid run through late April and May. The back of the rotation was in tatters. The bullpen was springing leaks. The lineup wasn’t hitting close to its collective price tag.

This is always who they’ve been, isn’t it? Think about the circumstances in which Rob Thomson landed his job. Think about the weeks that preceded their seven-game winning streak late last September. Think about the drama of the last two postseasons.

They don’t make it easy. And yet, they make it.

Thomson understands this. Always has. It’s deeper than his demeanor. Thomson’s even keel is a reflection of the profound and genuine faith he has in his team. Maybe a better word is trust. Faith is a one-way street. It implies a certain level of belief in the unknown and unseen. Thomson knows his players better than anybody. He knows them because he sees them for who they are, and he has seen what they can do. He trusts them to do it. They have earned that trust. Not only that, but they thrive on it.

Thomson deserves a ton of credit for that unwavering trust. I’m sure it isn’t always easy. I like to think that there are plenty of nights when the cameras turn off and the last player leaves and Thomson walks around the clubhouse to make sure he is alone and then he turns on the clubhouse speakers and blasts Limp Bizkit and spends an hour standing in front of the pitching machine taking fastballs off his chest. Either that, or he is like Wayne Brady in the Chapelle’s Show sketch.

But I digress.

Trust would lose a lot of its power if it was easy. But it would be nice if, just this once, the Phillies didn’t make it hard. They are 4½ games up with 16 to play. By that I mean they are 4½ games up on the Brewers, which is the only team that matters. The Mets are a stepping-stone. This weekend’s series matters only in the sense that it can be three wins closer to a wild-card bye. The division is all but clinched. What matters is clinching those critical days off.

It sounds silly, given the results of the last two postseasons. Both times, the Phillies went from the wild card to the National League Championship Series. Both times they beat a Braves team that seemed laden with rust.

This year, it matters. It matters because of the age of the lineup and of the top two guys in the rotation. It matters because of the potential of facing Chris Sale in Game 1 of a best-of-three series, and potentially Reynaldo López in Game 2, depending on his health.

» READ MORE: Should the Phillies be worried about Ranger Suárez?

Mostly, it matters because a team can’t possibly hope to live as the Phillies have for a third postseason as a row. In 2022 and 2023, we saw a team that lived in fifth gear and then ran out of gas. The goal is not to make it to the World Series or come close. A wild-card bye is critical to that quest.

So, yes, finish off the division. Sweep the Mets. Crush their dreams. Let Bryce Harper show everyone what a real MVP looks like. Eight games up in the division with 16 to play is a feat worth celebrating. So, too, will the eventual clinch.

But Milwaukee is what matters. The sooner, the better.