McCaffery: Phillies are a patchworked comedy of errors … and maybe a playoff team

PHILADELPHIA — Against the odds, 32 blown saves on their record, the Alec Bohm defensive experience having seared their consciousness and with 80 percent of a fully staffed starting pitching rotation, the Phillies Monday made it to their final homestand of the regular season.

They were without their leading right-handed home run hitter, their No. 3 starter and any of their first three preferred centerfielders.

They were onto their third or fourth version of what they’ve been able to pass off as a bullpen.

Their All-Star catcher had a sore shoulder and their shortstop was yelling about a bothersome elbow. Their starting pitcher began the season as a reliever. Their third baseman was a rent-a-veteran, back for his second run through the organization.

And yet, there the Phillies were, involved in the NL East and almost guaranteed to remain so until the season’s final hours.

Who?

What?

How in the name of Mickey Moniak did that happen?

“It’s great,” Joe Girardi was saying before a game against the Baltimore Orioles. “You just think of all the work you’ve put in to get to this point, to have an opportunity to get into the playoffs, to be relevant in your division. It really starts the day after last year’s season. You start planning. You start working. Players start doing things.

“This is what it is all about. All that stuff you did in November and December, January and February, this is what it is all about. We’re fortunate to be in this position. So you have to take advantage of it.”

They were fortunate to be in a right division at the right time. But all these weeks, all those roster changes, all those injuries (and Bryce Harper, their MVP candidate, had seven), all those strikeouts and all those nights when fans left the ballpark furious at Hector Neris later, the schedule had left them in a position where they almost still controlled their fate.

For that, it was time to announce: The Phillies have had themselves one of the most captivating seasons in years.

That’s right. Captivating. That’s what the season became even when the customers were boycotting the box office in some sort of region-wide, juvenile temper tantrum.

That’s what it became, even when the media grew so disinterested that social-distancing was easy in the press box.

That’s what it became when Girardi was being criticized, usually with cause, for having an atrocity of a season in the dugout.

“It’s a resilient group that has found a way to bounce back,” Girardi has said. “We just have to keep playing well, worry about ourselves and go from there.”

All year, Girardi has bragged about the Phillies’ ability to recover from seeming baseball disaster. And he has been right. Dozens of times, the Phillies would recover from a disappointing homestands or late defeat, a losing streak or game featuring Enyel De Los Santos. Resilient, they were. And while that is a handy way to smear praise on any athletic team, there is only one way to show the ability to bounce back: There has to be something to bounce back from.

And that’s what has made the Phillies impossible to stop watching: They were always punching themselves out of a corner that they somehow had tucked themselves into.

That hardly made them one of the classic teams in franchise history. Better Roy Halladay was threatening to throw a shutout every fifth day than witness Girardi finishing a season with four starting pitchers and a weekly bullpen game. Should the Phils fail to make the playoffs, and that shouldn’t be a surprise since they haven’t done so since 2011, they will be quickly forgotten and then largely dismantled by Dave Dombrowski before the equipment-truck-to-Clearwater photo op.

No one is saying the Brad Miller replica jersey will be a must-have Christmas gift. But a team needn’t be dominating to have been interesting. It just had to be … interesting. So it was interesting that Miller showed enough power to limit the effects of the season-ending injury to Rhys Hoskins. And it was interesting that Jean Segura supplied such consistent hitting. And it was breathtaking to watch Harper unload as complete a season as any Phillie has had in the modern era, walking, hitting, hitting with power, scoring runs, working against the shift, frolicking around the outfield, showing a powerful arm, delivering in the clutch and carrying an otherwise tormented team into its final hours.

“We’re a resilient club here,” Andrew McCutchen has said. “We know what we’re capable of doing. It doesn’t matter what the score is. It doesn’t matter what inning it is. If we keep it close, we know we have the opportunity to win that ball game.

“We never felt like we were out of it.”

They weren’t out of it, never, not after major injuries, not after some understandable fan revolt.

But they have six home games remaining and a chance.

Ignore them at your own risk.

Contact Jack McCaffery at jmccaffery@21st-centurymedia.com