Advanced Analytics: The Phillies Need To Start Threatening To Beat More People Up
So here’s a little fun fact for all you boys and girls back home:
The Philadelphia Phillies fucking suck. This team isn’t just renting real estate at rock bottom. They went ahead and they bought. They’ve lost 9 out of their last 10 games. They got swept by the goddamn Marlins. They got swept by the Nationals. And they lost 2 of 3 to the Braves. They started off the month in 1st place in the NL East, and now they’re 6.5 games back behind Atlanta. That’s a pretty shitty month of baseball if you ask me.
Something has to give. There needs to be some sort of change here. You can’t spend $330 million on Bryce Harper over the offseason and still be this impossible to watch. The organization needs to make their money back on that contract somehow, and they sure as shit aren’t going to be getting people to keep watching these games to pay the bill. So what needs to change? What kind of spark needs to occur to make this team at least a little bit interesting again? Well it’s pretty simple if you ask me.
Now this may seem a little unconventional to some since I don’t think many people would ever argue that any professional baseball team should take a page out of the Mets’ playbook. The Mets are an absolute joke and nobody should ever aspire to be like them. With that being said–desperate times call for desperate measures. And when you see what the Mets are doing right now, I think it’s exactly what the Phillies need. They need to start challenging some reporters to a physical altercation and threatening to knock them the fuck out. I don’t need them to follow through on any of those threats, but we at least need to see a little fight from them. Right now it just looks like this team is complete ass and they’re content with that. They’re right on the brink of just throwing in the towel and giving up on the season. It’s easy to point and laugh at the Mets for being such a disaster and fighting with reporters. But at least they’re fighting. At least they are showing some sign of life. And at the very least, that makes them interesting. That’s at least something to talk about.
I don’t pretend to be some sort of expert on baseball. But if there’s one thing I know for a fact that I’m an expert in, it’s watching teams spiral into total irrelevancy in this city. I’ve seen it happen with the Flyers just this very year. If the Phillies just continue to go on about the rest of their season without making any significant changes, well then nobody is going to give a shit because it’s the summer and people have better things to do than to watch this team get swept by the Marlins. But if you start threatening to beat people up? Well that might just generate enough buzz to keep people interested long enough for you to figure it out on the field and turn the season back around.