Four reasons the Phillies shouldn’t panic at 0-4

If this were the NFL, there would be 4:50 left in the second quarter of Week 1. Literally.

Published April 4, 2023, 9:27 a.m. ET

Everyone say a prayer for the poor Phillies employees who have spent countless hours putting together the pregame ceremony for Thursday’s opener at Citizens Bank Park. If the ol’ ballclub doesn’t find a way to win one of these next two games, the home crowd may not be in a mood to celebrate the accomplishments of yesteryear. Things could get a bit awkward.

Consider this my contribution to the hearts and minds campaign.

Four reasons the season ain’t over at 0-4....

1. The season is, in fact, not over.

This is one of the few things we can say for sure about this Phillies team. It’s a long season. If this were the NFL, there would be 4:50 left in the second quarter of Week 1. Literally. I did the math. Do the first 25 minutes of an Eagles season tell you who they are? Sometimes. But sometimes not. Point is, we don’t really know. Sure, it’d be easier if the Phillies were 4-0 and we could fool ourselves into thinking that we should start talking about them as one of the greatest teams that ever walked the earth. But life ain’t easy, and neither is a 162-game schedule. They haven’t even gotten all the way through their first time through the rotation. As they say, it ain’t over until the long-haired reliever starts a game.

Two years ago, the Braves started 0-4 and went on to win 88 games and the World Series. That same year, the A’s started 0-6 and won 86 games. In fact, six of the last 13 teams to start 0-4 ended up five-plus games over .500, with four of them making the playoffs. So, there’s that.

2. The lineup has looked pretty darn good.

Not good enough to overcome a pitching staff that allows 9.25 runs per game, sure. But the 12 runs they’ve scored is a poor indication of how the bats are swinging right now. They have the sixth-highest OPS in the National League with Bryce Harper out of the lineup and Kyle Schwarber hitting 1-for-17 with no walks. Situational hitting tends to even itself out. The breaks simply haven’t gone their way. Just look at Sunday’s loss to the Rangers. Schwarber hit a ball 416 feet that ended up as an out. According to Statcast, the expected batting average on his fifth-inning shot to right field was .890. A majority of the time, that swing on that pitch is a two-run home run. The Phillies reached base 12 times, eight of them with less than two outs, and scored one run. That’s tough to do.

3. The hitters who can really raise this team’s ceiling have looked like hitters who will end up doing that.

Alec Bohm, Bryson Stott, Nick Castellanos and Brandon Marsh are a combined 21-for-46 with eight doubles, a triple and a home run. Bohm alone is 7-for-15 with a home run, two doubles, and only two strikeouts. He has a chance to have a very big season that would give the Phillies an incredibly potent top two-thirds of the order.

4. The pitching can’t get worse.

OK, maybe it can. No need to sugarcoat things, here. Things are really dicey in the rotation right now. The absence of Ranger Suárez is a really big problem. Taijuan Walker may have been billed as a No. 3 starter, but that was always dependent on semantics. He’s never been a guy who was going to give you the pitching edge in Game 3 of most playoff series. The hope was that Suarez would be that guy after an excellent finish to the 2022 season.

All that being said, if Aaron Nola and Zack Wheeler end up being who they’ve been for most of their careers, it will be hard for the Phillies to finish worse than they did last season. We saw some positive signs out of the bullpen on Sunday, when Andrew Bellatti, Connor Brogdon and Gregory Soto combined to retire eight of the nine batters they faced and keep a 2-1 loss to the Rangers close until the end.

The front of the bullpen is where this Phillies team might be able to differentiate itself from last year. With this lineup, they can win a lot of games by preventing deficits from snowballing. Soto followed up his awful season opener by striking out two and getting a groundout on Sunday.

Look, it’s going to come down to pitching. That was always going to be the case. Their ceiling was always going to hinge on Wheeler, Nola, Seranthony Domínguez and Jose Alvarado. With Suárez down, they desperately need all four of those guys right. Obviously, there is some cause for concern there. Pitchers get hurt, and even if they don’t get hurt, they get worn down. It’s a very real question as to whether the Phillies have the depth to withstand the loss of one of those guys.

That being said, one bad outing in the first appearance of a season is no cause for doomerism.