Phillies Good, Yankees Bad, Up Is Down: This Particular Week In Baseball

Before a recent plane trip, my seven-year-old son stood in the middle of the waiting area at a major airport and announced to no one in particular that "My daddy doesn't mind if I say the F word." This was somewhat surprising to me—the daddy in question—primarily because I do, in fact, mind if he says the F word. We had a short talk about the meaning of language and how the appropriateness of one's surroundings should be factored in.

A few days passed. Maybe a week. We returned to the airport to catch a flight home. My son and his few days of accumulated wisdom decides another announcement is in order. He proceeds to alert those around us that the way you say some animal in Japanese is [mumble]-[mumble]-FUCK-[mumble].

Sometimes you're going to get tricked, quite possibly by young people, and never see it coming. That brings us to the Phillies.

There was no bigger surprise in baseball last season than the Kansas City Royals. Despite winning the American League the year before, most projection systems thought the Royals were a momentary sugar high, a discarded and uneaten donut on the sidewalk. Instead they won the World Series, which is honestly not bad for a stale donut. After 20 games, this year is shaping up similarly for the Royals who are cruising along in the middle lane at 13-11, giving the finger to various projections as they pass.

If the 2014 Royals were a discarded roadside donut, the Philadelphia Phillies are a partially eaten ant-covered lollipop in a grade school parking lot. Just as the experts were wrong about the Royals, so far they've been very wrong about the Phillies. Which is interesting, because the Phillies were thought to be the worst team in baseball. Not one of the worst but the absolute worst. It wasn't just experts or the fancy projection algorithms that thought the Phillies would be horrible, either. It was everyone. Experts, non-experts, analysts, ornithologists, announcers, hairstylists, people who make shit up on the internet, everyone. If you could slip truth serum to Phillies' players I bet they'd admit to being more surprised than any of the above. No professional athlete can excel at a sports without a premium-grade chip on their shoulder, and that surely has something to do with the team's play, but they're not delusional. This was their opening day lineup.

The Phillies were supposed to be 10-15. Instead they are 15-10. They aren't in first place yet because the Nationals keep winning—unless they're playing the Phillies—but if they keep playing like this, they will be soon enough. Philadelphia is 9-1 over its last 10, and that includes sweeping the Indians and the Nationals in Washington.

There are two answers to how this is happening. The first is, wow, isn't baseball awesome? This is why they play the games, this is why it's fun to follow, you just can't predict it! And so on! The second and maybe more compelling answer is that it's just 25 games, you dope. The 2015 Phillies had a stretch where they went 17-8 and they finished 63-99, which would be worse than their 2016 projection. I suspect the truth is probably somewhere in between, and also believe that both answers can be true. At any rate, it suggests that the Phillies are probably better than we thought, and maybe by a significant margin, and that they could get better still when the promising prospects expected to arrive late this season start showing up. Either way, this is a pretty impressive run for a team everyone thought was putting guys on the field because league norms consider it rude not to do so.

Most years it happens. Most years the Yankees go into Fenway Park in Boston and lose a series. This always happens. And when it does, New York media invariably makes a federal case out of it. And so it is that, after the Yankees spent their weekend losing three of three in Boston, the assembled media is foaming at the mount. Ken Davidoff of the New York Post says, "… the good news is the Yankees have found a solution for their problems with runners in scoring position: Put fewer runners in scoring position." Wallace Matthews of ESPN says, "Choose your adjective: Repetitive. Monotonous. Dispiriting. Same-old/same-old." George King III of the Post says, "This is what it sounds like when bats die."

All of which makes the Yankees sound like the worst Broadway musical ever. The press hasn't used that particular metaphor to describe the Yankees season yet, but at 8-15 and in last place, that, along with a whole lot of other garbage, will be heaved their way pretty soon.

This week features the first entrance into the T5OTM by a previous member of the Bottom 3 Of The Moment (B3OTM). Amazing, you say! Incredible, you say! Kinda BS, you say! Yes, absolutely, to all three. But the truth is I'm in awe of the Phillies right now and I wanted another excuse to talk about them and as there aren't really five great teams in baseball right now, it wasn't too much to squeeze a 15-10 team in. Also, let's be realistic, if not now, when?

5. Phillies

Quick Comment: Phillies fans are excited about the team and even more excited about the prospect of them falling off. Projectiles readied, sir!

Less Quick Comment: A team that was supposed to be rebuilding, and not even doing much more than entering that stage, seems they may have far more talent than we lowly experts thought. Odubel Herrera is sporting a 21 percent walk rate and a strikeout rate five percent lower than that. Aaron Nola, Jerad Eickhoff, and Vincent Velasquez look like a potent top and middle of the rotation. Hector Neris is striking out a ridiculous 43 percent of the hitters he's faced, which slots neatly in between Delliln Betances and Craig Kimbrel for second in baseball among pitchers who have thrown at least 10 innings. The Phillies may not have the offense to keep up this pace—they are getting out-scored on the season in addition to being 8-2 in luck-dependent one-run games—but for now at least, this is a bright pillar of light to the heavens when only a storm was expected. That storm may and probably will come, but for now, have a beer and enjoy the nice weather.

4. Mets

Quick Comment: Hey! It's the team that's easy to root for until you remember what jerks the Wilpons are! Go Meeee…eee… eh uh, never mind.

Less Quick Comment: Let's take a moment to talk about Noah Syndergaard: wow.

That was probably not expansive enough. Let's try again, and in fact, let's back up. There are, roughly speaking, four things a good pitcher will do. Those things are: They don't allow homers, they get lots of strikeouts, they don't walk hitters, and they get tons of ground balls. Syndergaard does literally all of those things. He is striking out a ridiculous number of hitters, to the point you'd think he was a reliever, but he isn't, he just plays one each inning. He's not walking almost anyone (just four in 26.2 innings), he's got a silly 56.7 percent ground ball rate, and he's not allowed a single homer all season. Pitchers go pop all the time and it doesn't matter how significant their stats are at the time their elbow decides to give way, but right now, at this moment, Syndergaard is Apex Roger Clemens. He's literally the perfect pitcher.

3. White Sox

Quick Comment: Every year the White Sox expect to be good, and every year we don't expect them to.

Less Quick Comment: The White Sox have two of the top 50 offensive players in baseball according to FanGraphs WAR. But for Sunday's game, neither player was slugging over .400. Adam Eaton is having a fine year but more of his overall production comes from his magnificence in the field. Melky Cabrera is 49th on that list and he's a lesser version of Eaton in both respects. So how are the White Sox 18-8? Depth on offense and pitching. Jose Quintana, Chris Sale, and to a lesser extent Carlos Rodon are a potent top three, and Nate Robertson, Nate Jones, and Zach Putnam have closed the door from the pen.

2. Nationals

Quick Comment: Dusty Baker is keeping the team loose, which is only one O more than how ex-manager Matt Williams kept the team. It's an important O.

Less Quick Comment: It's so hard to do this and not talk about Bryce Harper, but let's try. Okay. Hey! You know how good Daniel Murphy has been this season? Almost as good as… oh rats.

1. Cubs

Quick Comment: The Cubs headed for Pittsburgh dressed up like idiots in awful suits. Gosh, Joe Maddon really is a genius, isn't he?

Less Quick Comment: Jake Arrieta has been incredible again this year, but if you look a bit more closely, you'll see his strikeouts are down, his walks are up, and he's leaving a completely unsustainable number of men on base, a fact that is surely helped by a silly .188 BABIP. That Arrieta isn't pitching as well as his numbers indicate surely isn't a shock on the level of say, the Phillies, or a clown outside your living room window. But, for a team that needs him to reach the World Series, it's something to monitor.

After just a week we're giving the Reds the boot for being too un-lousy. In their place, please welcome the Houston Astros! The Astros have managed to win consecutive games this season a whopping total of never times. Additionally they've used those lone wins to bookend losing streaks of three, three, four, and three games. This is the kind of dedication it takes to reach the B3OTM. Congratulations, Astros!

3. Astros

Quick Comment: Dallas Keuchel has a 4.41 ERA, and 2.99 FIP, and a 3.49 xFIP. So he's been bad, but really he's been good, but really really not that good.

Less Quick Comment: Jose Altuve, George Springer, Carlos Correa, Colby Rasmus, that's an excellent top of the order. After that they should probably consider using ghost runners and then just go back to the top again.

2. Twins

Quick Comment: Byron Buxton proved the old adage correct, that you can't strike out in half your plate appearances and keep a major league job.

Less Quick Comment: The weird thing is the Twins aren't devoid of hope. Joe Mauer is raking at Peak Mauer levels. Trevor Plouffe is Plouffetastic. Miguel Sano hasn't crashed through the outfield and been sucked into the earth's core. These are good things! Keep hope alive!

1. Braves

Quick Comment: There are two reasons the Braves should move Jeff Francouer to reliever. The first is why not, and the second one is that the Braves are so uninteresting that they made me forget the second one.

Less Quick Comment: Oh, gosh, really? An actual comment on the Braves? I thought you were kidding. Okay, uh, they beat the Red Sox in Boston and we won't mention the other three games in that series. This team is in cruise control toward a first overall draft pick. The only suspense is how many innings Frenchy gets to pitch and how I'm going to keep this up for the rest of the season.

The Cubs hold a three game lead over the Pirates in the NL Central. Coincidence that the Pirates are hosting the Cubs for three games starting today? Yes, it is! They made the schedules months ago. There is no better word for it.

But that doesn't make it any less entertaining. This is a series that should feature Gerrit Cole for the Pirates, and Jake Arrieta and Jon Lester for the Cubs. It's early of course, but there's a six game swing here should some team sweep. Also the Cubs can start to put some distance between themselves and the rest of the division. It's only May, but even in May six games is a lot.