First-place Phillies are benefitting from NL East injuries

While it hasn’t been pretty, the Philadelphia Phillies find themselves leading the lackluster NL East with the MLB season roughly 20% complete. There’s still a long road ahead, of course, but this is most surely a positive development for a team that has yet to hit its stride. Any day in first place is a good day, even when you’re leading “the NFC East of baseball”, as the Phillies currently are.

Clutch performances like Zack Wheeler’s beautiful shutout aside, most would attribute the Phillies’ current position in the standings to the fact that the other teams in it just can’t seem to get rolling. They’re not wrong. Nearly every offseason move made by the rest of the NL East has failed to pan out yet, giving the Phillies a window where they can figure out their own shortcomings and either hold serve or maybe even start to put some distance between themselves and the rest of the clubs.

Let’s start with the New York Mets, everyone’s trendy pick to surge to the top of the division this year, largely on the strength of their offseason acquisition (and subsequent huge contract agreement with), Francisco Lindor. While he hasn’t been felled by injury this year, Lindor has been a huge disappointment in his first month as a Met, batting a putrid .157 with just one home run and three RBI.

Also important, however, was the fact that pitcher Carlos Carrasco came over in that deal as well. We’ve yet to see Carrasco pitch for the Mets after he suffered an offseason hamstring injury, robbing them of a chance to have a highly effective starter in their rotation for at least the first two months of the season.

The Philadelphia Phillies are well positioned to stay in the top spot in the National League East.

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And then there is the health of Jacob deGrom. A recently suffered side injury doesn’t look overly serious, but it is a possible crack in the armor of the best pitcher in baseball. While we can’t hope for the Mets’ season to be ruined by an injury to their ace, this development could end up representing a huge hurdle that the Philadelphia Phillies don’t even have to clear themselves.

In Atlanta, the defending division champion Braves were expected to be strong yet again, but it hasn’t happened to date. Catcher Travis d’Arnaud, who re-signed with the club after last year, is out long-term with a thumb injury, severely weakening the Braves at that position. Meanwhile, pitcher Mike Soroka remains out after his Achilles injury last year and a subsequent shoulder issue this spring. The Braves can’t wait to get him back in the rotation, especially with the rough starts they’ve gotten from offseason acquisitions Drew Smyly and Charlie Morton.

The Phillies weren’t even expected to hang with the likes of the Mets and Braves this year, yet here we are. The Nationals were seemingly more their speed, and the injury bug has not been kind to them either. The team’s best player, Juan Soto, has missed time with a shoulder injury, putting a large dent in the offense. Soto’s IL stint came shortly after Stephen Strasburg suffered his annual injury, a shoulder problem that he developed in his second start of the season. Things are quickly going down the tubes in our national’s capital.

And then there are the Marlins, who weren’t projected to do much this year but are always worth mentioning because of the way they give the Phillies fits. They still may end up doing that, as the team’s haven’t met yet in 2021, but the Fish have some issues of their own. Important regulars like Starling Marte, Jazz Chisholm, and our old pal Jorge Alfaro remain out of the lineup, while promising youngster Elieser Hernandez left his first start of the year with a biceps injury.

Meanwhile, crown jewel Sixto Sanchez has yet to pitch this season due to shoulder inflammation. Maybe the Phillies were right to include him in the J.T. Realmuto deal, although it’s still far too early to make a final call on that.

I’m not saying that this is going to be easy for the Philadelphia Phillies, but an optimist would point to the fact that the Phils have managed to climb into first place despite all of their warts, and they have several more months of baseball to fix things so that they can remain there. Then again, you could take the other side and point out how tightly bunched this division is, and that every team is in decent shape if they can get over injury troubles and early-season ineffectiveness.

The Philadelphia Phillies have their own share of injuries, of course, and the law of averages says that more will come (for them and everyone else) during this MLB season. But right now, it’s actually easy to feel pretty good about where they are in the standings. In the end, somebody’s gotta win this division. Why not this Phillies team? They’re far from perfect, but nobody else seems willing or able to stake their claim right now. It might as well be them.