The Phandemics stood out from all of the baseball aficionados shut out of ballparks this year, and to fully understand why, you need to understand where Citizens Bank Park is located. Wrigley Field and Fenway Park are squeezed into bustling neighborhoods, and the Giants' and Pirates' homes are perfectly situated on the water for maximum sense of place.
Citizens Bank Park, on the other hand, is dropped into a parking lot on the fringe of Philadelphia, along with the city's other major sports venues. A nice skyline hangs on the horizon to the north, but there aren't rows of bars and restaurants right outside the ballpark to sustain fans, no hotels across the street. Yet the Phandemics showed up every night to claim space outside of the center-field gate, with an extremely limited view of the ball field, and they would faithfully cheer their socially distant team and jeer the opponents -- going so far, in one game, that they prompted complaints from Yankees manager Aaron Boone when someone broke out an air horn.
The Phillies' fans are starved for the kind of success that is increasingly locked away in long-term memories. A dozen years have passed since the team won the 2008 World Series, and nine years since they last made the playoffs, an extraordinary drought for a big-money, big-market team. And while they've won more games in recent seasons and got infinitely more interesting with the signing of Bryce Harper, this is a franchise that seems to be drifting.
At the same time, NL rivals like the Braves and Mets are surging. New Mets owner Steve Cohen effectively declared a baseball war on the rest of the division Tuesday, stating a goal of winning the World Series within three to five years. The Braves are constructed with an extraordinary clubhouse culture fostered by likely MVP Freddie Freeman as well as talented players like Ronald Acuna Jr., Mike Soroka and Max Fried, and Atlanta came within one win of reaching the World Series last month.
The Washington Nationals remain the last team to win a championship during a full coronavirus-free season, and recently re-signed GM Mike Rizzo to a long-term extension. Even the Marlins have improved.
The Phillies' work in this offseason, to date, has been a quiet, strange retreat. Matt Klentak's power to oversee baseball decisions was taken away, although he's still in the organization, and the team does not appear to be in active, wide-ranging pursuit of a replacement. For now, it appears the Phillies will continue to work with Ned Rice effectively serving as an interim GM. Andy MacPhail's title is president of baseball operations, but he is long past the days when he's the primary deal-maker and roster architect, and the perception is he'll leave after his current contract expires.
If you were sitting in the shoes of owner John Middleton, then the idea of seeking, anointing and paying someone new to lead baseball operations into the future might be grating, especially when the Phillies are paying MacPhail, Klentak, Rice and others -- and, like other teams, already are coping with revenue loss and resulting layoffs.
But the simple fact is that as of today, the Phillies' front office is operating without the long-term vision of an Andrew Friedman, an Erik Neander, a Theo Epstein, a Brian Cashman. Rice might be the guy holding the steering wheel at the moment, but the Phillies are working without a map for player development, for scouting, and for how they might improve for 2021. There are a lot of ways that Middleton could go in picking the next leader of his front office, whether it's someone experienced like former GMs Brian Sabean or Jim Hendry, or someone younger from the analytics generation. Maybe Middleton will wait for Epstein's deal to expire (and some in the industry expect that Epstein will move on from the Cubs before the start of the '21 season).
The Phillies need a plan, for the future and for now, because the Braves are getting better, the Mets may be dramatically better -- perhaps adding the likes of George Springer and Trevor Bauer -- the Nationals will be better in '21 and the Marlins have a lot of talent. That the Phillies have dallied about their front-office leadership is a source of enormous confusion around the sport, because whatever salary is required for the next head honcho in baseball operations is an infinitesimal fraction of what's at stake financially for the franchise, in picking the right players at the right prices, and in the resulting revenues. "It's small-minded," said one executive.
The Phillies have major holes -- they finished 27th among 30 teams in ERA, with a historically awful bullpen, and have rotation spots to fill. Shortstop Didi Gregorius is headed into free agency. The Phillies have decisions to make at first base, in the outfield and, yes, with catcher J.T. Realmuto, who has moved into free agency as the best available player at his position.
All the while, the clock is ticking with Harper. Most teams agree to the massive, multiyear deals -- like Harper got prior to the '19 season -- assuming they'll get the player's best seasons in the first third of the contract, with some regression in the middle of the deal, and decline in the last years. The 28-year-old Harper has been really good for the Phillies so far, fitting in perfectly, with an Adjusted OPS+ of 134. But if the team is going to seriously contend in the next couple of years, right in Harper's prime years, there has to be significant improvement in the pitching.
How they make that happen and who is going to make that happen are questions that hang over an inert franchise, questions being asked by the Phandemics and Phillies' faithful.