Over this past Spring Break, I found myself sitting in Olive Garden in Springfield wearing a jersey of Mike Aviles that I got in Kansas City at a Royals game many, many years ago. When our waiter came over and asked me the question “You like baseball? Who is your favorite team?” I told him that it was the Cubs, and after a short conversation about the Cubs and other baseball teams, he mentioned that he was in a fantasy league where you picked a couple of teams to follow and how you did in a given year depended on how those teams did. He mentioned a few teams that he was planning to pick, and he asked me who was a team he should consider. I said that I thought the dark horse of the season would be the Philadelphia Phillies, who last year had a record of 63-99, good for the worst record in the majors. I had heard they could be ok so I just said the Phillies… not really taking the time to think about it.

To begin the season, the Phillies dropped their first four games. Analysts ranted about how it was the same old, same old in Philly. However, something weird happened…. The Phils started to win games. Twenty games into the season, the Phillies were a .500 team. They would go on to win their next six games and at one time were close to leading the NL East. Currently, the Phillies have 20-15 and are 3rd in the NL East Division by 1.5 games behind the New York Mets and Washington Nationals who are both tied for first. However, they have one of the worst run differentials in the league at -13.   
Pat Gillick, the team’s president, upon taking over the presidency of the team in 2010, stated that he didn’t expect the team to be contenders until 2017 at the earliest. Pete Mackanin, the team’s manager, must think otherwise. Over the course of about a year, Mackanin has turned the Phillies from a laughing stock to a potential contender. Of course, he could not have done it without the help of players like Odubel Herrera, Vincent Velazquez, or Maikel Franco.