So, push has now come to shove. Figuring out how to spend a bye week, like the Phillies just completed, was the biggest task presented them this week as the Los Angeles Dodgers were disposing of the Cincinnati Reds in a National League Wild Card Series.
The Phillies handled their week with work. After a day off on Monday, there was a fundamental-based practice on Tuesday, followed by an intrasquad scrimmage on Wednesday in front of 31,000 fans. A couple more days of staying sharp and now it’s here – Game One of the National League Division Series, with Dodgers righty Shohei Ohtani facing Phillies left-hander Cristopher Sanchez.
The week off is as much mentally challenging as it is physically. Taking time off during a season just isn’t the norm, except for the All-Star Break. And if there’s anything baseball players and managers don’t like, it’s having their routine disrupted. Add in all the talk about whether it’s good or not to spend some days away from the diamond at this point of the year, and it probably becomes more of a dilemma than it really needs to be.
“It’s an advantage if you win the first series and it’s a disadvantage if you don’t,” said Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski.
In essence, the Phillies have already won a series with the bye, while the Dodgers made quick work of the Reds, finishing them off in two games and outscoring them by a combined 18-9. During that series, Dodgers starters Blake Snell and Yoshinobu Yamamoto worked 13 2/3 innings and allowed just eight hits and two earned runs while striking out 18.
How the Phillies hitters fare in this series against the Dodgers starters is going to be a huge factor. In their three-game series in Los Angeles in the middle of September, the Phillies were no-hit during Ohtani’s five innings, got two hits, no runs and struck out 12 times in Snell’s seven innings and were able to garner only one hit and one run in Emmet Sheehan’s 5 2/3 innings.
Should the Phillies get shut down by the Los Angeles starters to begin this series, you just know the airwaves are going to be filled with talks about the disadvantages of the bye.
Said Trea Turner: “I say it till I’m blue in the face. It’s just an excuse one way or the other. You’ve got to show up and you’ve got to win. You either win or you don’t.”
And Nick Castellanos had some thoughts, saying: “Obviously (like having) the bye because we’re closer to the World Series. But I think if there was a way to play competitive baseball, not have the outcome knock us out, we get the bye no matter what, I think that’s personally what I wish could happen. I just know how important rhythm is and consistency is to a game like baseball because of how difficult it is.”
For manager Rob Thomson, the week couldn’t have gone any better. Now it’s time to see if that pays off or not.
“I’m telling you, the intrasquad game just put it over the top, with all these people here,” he said. “It really did. Case in point, it was, I forget what inning it was, and there was a runner on first and Nick (Castellanos) hit a ground ball. Double play and he ran hard all the way through the base. Whereas, if there’s nobody in the stands, probably doesn’t happen. Those are the little things that I look at and say that was worth it.”
Time will now tell.
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