The pitcher on the mound for the final out Monday night in Los Angeles was on school pickup duty four months ago.

The first go-ahead homer was hit by a guy with more at-bats in Triple A this year than the majors.

The winning run was scored by a player on his sixth club in four years, who went unsigned into February.

It’s too much to brand the Philadelphia Phillies, your two-time National League East champions, as plucky upstarts in 2025, as a band of misfits in whom no one believed. Their talent and pedigree prevents that. But adversity is baked into the journey the Phillies have taken to a fourth straight postseason berth, sealed in the wee hours of the Philadelphia morning by David Robertson, Weston Wilson, Harrison Bader and company with a 6-5 win over Los Angeles.

The metric that matters for the Phillies has long since ceased to be a division that they captured for the 13th time and second consecutive year, the first team in 2025 to cinch their division. What comes next is the business end of the season, and the Phillies have regressed a round each of the last two years since reaching the World Series in 2022.

But clinching the division with two weeks left is a testament to something special that manager Rob Thomson has concocted, a group that attained this success by a less-than-expected pathway.

“The last four years has been the most fun I’ve had in baseball in my 40 years in baseball,” a champagne-soaked Thomson said. “I can tell you that truthfully. This year has been special because we’ve had some guys go down.”

No team’s March blueprint survives for long. And in a division where one favorite’s playoff hopes hinge on three rookie starting pitchers (the Mets) and another’s perished in June with all five opening-day starters on the IL (the Braves), the Phillies’ challenges may not seem so grave.

But Monday’s epic win over the Dodgers in a tantalizing playoff preview contained elements unlikely in the spring. The most glaring is that a 14-4 stretch has proceeded without the services of Zack Wheeler, the Cy Young candidate done for the year with a blood clot in his throwing shoulder and a diagnosis of venous thoracic outlet syndrome.

Including Wheeler, three of 10 starters from Opening Day were unavailable Monday. A fourth, Nick Castellanos, has lost his everyday job in the outfield. When the season opened in Washington, Wheeler was followed out of the bullpen by Orion Kerkering, Jordan Romano and Jose Alvarado as the highest-leverage relievers. They have been – respectively – recently unreliable, awful-then-injured, and suspended-then-injured, with the latter two to play no part in the postseason.

So you have Robertson, signed in July on a cash deal to work the three most consequential months of the baseball calendar at age 40 with few signs of slowing down, preventing the Dodgers from scoring in the 10th. And you have Bader, part of the Mets team that so humbled the Phillies in last year’s NLDS, raking at a career rate in center. And you have Jhoan Duran, the best closer the team has had in a generation, his homer allowed to Andy Pages in the ninth Monday notwithstanding.

Much has gone as Thomson and the front office would’ve envisioned. The Phillies boast one of the best starting staffs in baseball, built around Wheeler and a trio of lefties. Cristopher Sanchez, deserving of a second straight All-Star nod, has led the staff with a 13-5 record and 2.57 ERA. Fellow lefties Ranger Suarez (12-6, 2.77 ERA) and Jesus Luzardo (14-6, 4.03) have been generally great and at times dominant. The Phillies starters have worked the most innings and have the highest wins above replacement tally in the majors.

“Losing a guy like Wheeler could really affect a team,” Thomson said. “And it didn’t with these guys. That’s a big loss, no doubt about it. But they just kept grinding and kept fighting and kept moving forward.”

Kyle Schwarber leads the National League with 53 homers and leads baseball with 128 RBIs. Trea Turner, on the injured list with a hamstring strain, is the NL leader in hits (179) and average (.305). Bryce Harper, hitting .264 with 27 homers and 73 RBIs, and J.T. Realmuto, with a .263 average and 51 RBIs, have been stalwarts again. Wilson, who hit a two-run homer in the seventh to put the Phillies up, and Otto Kemp, playing in place of the injured Alec Bohm, have been unlikely protagonists in this late-summer surge.

Not all has gone as expected. The Phillies exited the spring saying they’d hoped Andrew Painter could join the big club around July. It’s September and he’s not just in Lehigh Valley but carrying a 5-plus ERA. Fellow top prospect Justin Crawford hasn’t broken through, either.

The season has brought the normal swings. Where Brandon Marsh has surged, Bryson Stott occasionally looked lost through the summer, though he has been great for the last month. Where Taijuan Walker has come back from the brink of oblivion, Aaron Nola has lost his way in a rare injury-blighted season.

But collectively, the Phillies are where they need to be on the eve of the postseason. Thomson doesn’t take that for granted. And the scenes in the visiting clubhouse at Dodger Stadium Monday night showed his team doesn’t, either.

Contact Matthew De George at mdegeorge@delcotimes.com.

https://www.mcall.com/2025/09/16/de-george-phillies-path-to-nl-east-title-one-of-perseverance/