The Phillies Lost to a College Team

Yup, the Phillies lost their first spring training game to the Division II University of Tampa. Social media blew up with people using this as an indictment as to how bad the Phillies will be in 2015. My twitter timeline had dozens of “LMAO” and “LOL’s.”

There is no doubt the Phillies are going to be mediocre at best in 2015, unless Howard catches in the absence of the the physical and mental distractions that have been plaguing him for the past few years. However, losing this game has no bearing on anything.

Numerous writers have cited the UT Spartans website as stating that this is the first time a MLB team has lost to a college team since the Marlins lost to the University of Miami in 2011. That Marlins team went on to finish 72-90 that year. So, of course, the Phillies are going to as bad as that record since they, too, lost to a college team. It doesn’t matter that the Spartans had already played 14 games together or that the Phillies lineup consisted, predominately, of  players who will not be with the club on Opening Day.

I did a little digging. In April 2012, the Baltimore Orioles played an exhibition game against the State College Florida, Manatee, a community college. This wasn’t the first spring training game. This was in April, just before the MLB season started. The Orioles played Jason Hammel, JJ Hardy, Adam Jones, and Matt Wieters for the first five innings. Then put in propsects for the final four innings.  The Orioles lost 2-1. The Orioles also went on to finish 93-69 that season.

Am I saying that the Phillies will win 93 games this year? Nope, not even close. What am I saying? Don’t read too much into the fact that the Phillies lost to a Division II team. It’s happened before and to much better teams.