After one of the winningest regular seasons in Major League Baseball, the Philadelphia Phillies won the National League East division for the first time since 2011.
With that victory has come a first-round bye for the playoffs. The Phillies will open their playoff run on Saturday, October 5 by playing the winner of the National League Wild Card series between the New York Mets and Milwaukee Brewers.
The team recently revealed how it will be preparing for that matchup, telling MLB.com’s Todd Zolecki that the players will undergo a mix of simulations and workouts in hopes of staying sharp.
“The Phillies had Monday off, but they will return to work on Tuesday,” Zolecki reported. “Hitters can face pitchers if they want, or they can step into the batting cage against the high-velocity and Trajekt machines, which simulate the velocity and spin they will see this weekend and beyond.”
On Wednesday, the Phillies will play in an intrasquad matchup that includes umpires, walkup music and simulated crowd noise in hopes of generating some real-game momentum. Manager Rob Thomson is considering some kind of “carrot” that could motivate the players to win that in-house game.
Then, on Thursday and Friday, the players will work out again.
Collectively, the goal is to avoid going into the National League Division Series cold. The Phillies have enjoyed deep postseason runs in each of the last two seasons without extended time off, carrying momentum directly from the regular season into their playoff matchups.
While they prefer the rest and home-field advantage that comes with being one of the top seeds, there’s reason to worry that time away from real games can actually hurt a team.
“A layoff like that is supposed to ruin a hitter’s timing,” Zolecki added. “It is supposed to cripple an offense. At least, that is what the Braves said following each of the past two Octobers, when the Phillies beat them in the 2022 and 2023 NLDS.”
The Phillies, however, are maintaining confidence that their plans for the time off will be enough to keep them game ready.
“Just the technology and the drills and all the things that we have, it should be good enough to keep us sharp,” Trea Turner told Zolecki. “It’s still going to come down to playing good baseball.”
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