Santoliquito: Phillies Hope They Stay On Pace With 1961 Team
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — There was a time, believe it or not, when the Phillies were actually worse than how they're currently playing.
From 1933 to 1945, the Phillies finished last, or first-to-last, for 13-straight years in the eight-team National League. In seven of those 13 years, the Phillies lost 100 or more games—which included a 111-loss season in 1941, when the team went 43-111. At least that team had Hall of Famer Chuck Klein in the twilight of his career.
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The 2017 Phillies don't appear to have any future Hall of Famers on their roster. In fact, this team, now in complete freefall, doesn't seem to have much of anything.
At 17-33, entering Wednesday's get-away game in Miami, these current Phillies are careening towards history. The last time the Phillies lost more than 100 games in a season was in 1961, when they went 47-107. After 50 games, that team too was 17-33.
How crazy this sounds, the 1961 Phillies—the team that lost 107 games—was also a group that showed promise. The average age of the regular starting lineup was 24.6 years old. It was a team that had 22-year-old Johnny Callison and a pair of 23-year-old pitchers, Art Mahaffey and Chris Short.
The 1961 Phils were also a team whose nucleus also made a dramatic 34-game turnaround to go 81-80 in 1962, and were pennant contenders in 1963 and the infamous '64 team that won 92 games finished one game behind the eventual World Series champion St. Louis Cardinals.
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Can you see the Phillies as National League contenders within the next three years?
Can you see a future Johnny Callison in this lot of Cameron Rupp, Tommy Joseph, Cesar Hernandez, Freddy Galvis, Maikel Franco, Aaron Altherr (maybe), Odubel Herrera or Michael Saunders? Any future Chris Shorts or Art Mahaffeys in Vince Velasquez, Aaron Nola or Jerad Eickhoff?
Not likely.
The average age of the Phillies' every-day starters is 26.5 years old. The nucleus of this team, though temporary with what's supposed to be coming up from the Phillies' farm system, hasn't shown many consistent signs that they're poised to make the dramatic one-season turnaround as did the last Phillies team to lose 100 games.
Right now, the Phillies wish they were the '61 Phils, a bygone team that could easily be stamped as the pioneers of the modern adage "Trust the process." In that case, collecting young and talented players worked in reshaping a sorry franchise into a contending team.