The Most Dangerous Team in Baseball: The Philadelphia Phillies
The Major League Baseball season is approaching the Memorial Day weekend checkpoint, and the best team in baseball is probably different from who the majority of baseball fans and experts expected it to be. It is not the powerhouse Dodgers, the loaded Braves, or the defending champion Rangers. It is the Philadelphia Phillies. Coming off a National League Championship Series defeat to the Arizona Diamondbacks last season, the Phillies have come out of the gates firing on all cylinders in 2024. Philadelphia is off to a 35-14 record through the first 49 games, marking one of the best records through that amount of games to start a season in recent history. Teams in recent years to start this well were the Tampa Bay Rays just last season and the 2016 Cubs, who won the World Series.
This team can do it all, but the most impressive part of their team so far has been the outstanding starting pitching. After all, starting pitching is what it comes down to in October, and the Phillies have the best three-headed pitching monster in the big leagues. The leader of the bunch is Zack Wheeler, who is 5-3 with a 2.52 ERA and a 0.97 WHIP. Wheeler’s overpowering fastball is his best pitch, and his utilization of that fastball has resulted in his outstanding 71 strikeouts and just 19 walks ratio. Next is Aaron Nola, who signed a seven-year, $172 million extension with the Phillies in the offseason, and he has been worth every penny. Outside of his first start of the year against the Braves, where he gave up 12 hits and seven earned runs, Nola has been excellent. His ERA sits at 3.05, and the only reason it is that high is because of that blowup start against Atlanta. He has been a staple in Philadelphia’s rotation for the last eight years, and it looks like it will continue to stay that way for a while. The third head of this starting pitching monster is Ranger Suarez. While his name might not be as big as Wheeler or Nola, one could make a powerful case for Suarez to be the National League Cy Young winner if the season ended today. Suarez ranks second in the National League in ERA with a 1.36, and he leads the NL in wins with nine. He also has just a 0.79 WHIP in 66 innings pitched. Suarez has put this rotation over the top so far this season, and if he continues to produce like he has, the Phillies will enter October with the scariest starting rotation in the league.
Now that we've praised the great pitching, let's discuss the bats because this team has a lot of big ones. The Phillies lead the league in runs per game at 5.3, rank second in batting average and on-base percentage, third in hits, and fifth in on-base plus slugging percentage. They are one of only three teams to rank in the top five in all of those categories the other two teams are the Dodgers and Brewers. The star of the show is still Bryce Harper. He is tied for third in the NL in home runs while sporting a .925 OPS. While Harper is excellent, what makes this lineup so dangerous is the depth that it has throughout. Obviously, guys like Trea Turner, J.T. Realmuto, Kyle Schwarber, and Nick Castellanos have been known to produce, but this year specifically, Alec Bohm and Bryson Stott have stepped up big-time for this offense. Bohm leads the NL in RBI with 44, and Harper is not far behind him with 36. Stott has been great as the full-time second baseman. He has given the bottom of the lineup a big boost and rounded out the lineup well, batting in the nine-hole. With everyone being a threat one through nine in the order, the Phillies have the ability to hit their way to a win on any given day.
If you even want to call it that, the only question mark on this team would be the bullpen. However, that can be easily assessed at the trade deadline, and their bullpen has not even been horrible to this point. With the starting pitching and deadly lineup as good as they have been, it is easy to see how the Phillies have gotten off to this hot start. The Phillies have been the most complete and complementary team in all of baseball this season, and they have firmly placed themselves into the World Series contender conversation.
