The Phillies. The Braves. September. Bleh!

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The Phillies. The Braves. September. Bleh!

I’m going to the Phillies/Braves game tonight. This is the last game of my season ticket package. When I first saw the game as part of my plan back in the Spring, I was stoked. Now, my excitement level and interest in tonight’s game might be a one on a scale from one to forty.

Baseball games are a sacred time with some of my closest buddies. We watch a ballgame, drink beers, and catch up on life. If it wasn’t for that, I’d probably stay home and save my money. I mean, John Middleton is even skipping games these days to watch the Eagles.

Yeah, the Phillies are only two games out of the Wild Card, but it’s the Wild Card. It’s not really the Postseason, is it? A one-game playoff after a season of 2, 3, or 4-game series seems jenky

I know I sound like an ingrate. There are plenty of teams more than seven games out of the Wild Card race like San Francisco, Baltimore, San Diego, Texas, and the Angels. I actually thought the Phillies would be fighting the Braves for tonight for the Division, not the playoff scrap that is the Wild Card. This whole Wild Card thing feels anticlimactic.

It doesn’t help things that Realmuto, Harper, and Kingery are the only fun players to watch. Gabe mismanaging bullpens and making questionable decisions based solely on stats with zero feel for the game doesn’t help things.

This has been one of the most un-fun baseball seasons that I can remember since purchasing season tickets back in 2004. Every time you think they’re gonna put a string of wins together, this Phillies team throws in a clunker. They just aren’t good.

The manager is ordinary. Klentak is below ordinary thus far in his term as GM. Anyone can see that Realmuto and Harper have talented and can make moves to acquire them. Klentak actually needed Middleton’s involvement to close the deal. Klentak and his staff have shown an inability to evaluate pitching. They signed Arrieta to an inflated, multi-year deal and he STILL has a player option for another year. They didn’t even make Keuchel an offer. They had no idea that Pivetta, Velasquez, Eickhoff, or Eflin were not starting pitchers for a Playoff-caliber team, or most teams after seeing them day-to-day for years.

The reality is that this current Phillies roster doesn’t offer much hope for achieving anything substantial this year and the collection of Kapler, MacPhail, and Klentak offer very little hope for the future. In sports and in life, there is nothing worse than hopelessness.

That’s where I am right now with these Phillies and I know I’m not alone because they drew 25,000 on a nice September night for a game against their division rivals from Atlanta.