READING, Pa. — The thing about winning is that it’s easy to get used to. After a while, it becomes expected.
The Phillies learned this lesson the hard way. The more they won, the more it was expected until it became impossible. There was ebb and a flow for the Phillies. Winning was something they fell in to and not ingrained into their DNA.
For the future Phillies playing for Double A Reading in the Eastern League Championship Series — guys like J.P. Crawford, Nick Williams, Andrew Knapp, Jake Thompson and Zach Eflin — winning is expected. They know nothing different.
“A lot of it is confidence and these guys have tremendous confidence,” manager Dusty Wathan said after his club dropped Game 2 of the best-of-five Eastern League Championship Series against Bowie (see story).
“We have a talented group of guys and when a talented group of guys has confidence, they’re going to say, ‘You know what, it’s one game, it’s no big deal.’ They’re confident and I have confidence in them.”
Win or lose in the Eastern League Championship Series against the Orioles' affiliate Bowie, the learning curve for the Phillies’ top minor-league prospects is sharp. In fact, through the first 36 innings of the postseason, Reading never trailed. It swept the Mets’ affiliate, Binghamton, in three straight and jumped out to a Game 1 victory in the championship series behind a strong outing from Eflin.
When Bowie scored a run in the top of the first to take a quick lead in Game 2 on Wednesday night at FirstEnergy Stadium, Reading answered right back and continued to chip away until the game uncharacteristically spiraled out of reach with former prospect Ethan Martin on the mound.
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After the loss, the Fightin Phils weren’t blasé, but assured that the series will swing back their way with Thompson on the mound in Game 3.
“I don’t think anyone is too worried. This is a team that has come back in games,” said Knapp, who homered in the fourth inning of Game 2 and batted .360 during the regular season for Reading. “[Wednesday] wasn’t our night, but I don’t think anybody was really worried about it. You could clearly see that it wasn’t our best effort, but I think [Thursday] will be different.
“We’re confident. We know if we play our game and pitch and throw strikes, runs will come. No one is really too worried.”
It took a few years for the core Phillies group of Jimmy Rollins, Ryan Howard, Pat Burrell, Chase Utley, Cole Hamels and Shane Victorino to learn how to have that air of confidence that dared other teams to beat them. They had to take their lumps against the Braves and Marlins and Mets in the NL East before they figured it out.
After they got it, the Phillies won five straight division titles, went to the World Series twice and won it in 2008. It took some time, but they got there.
However, the team in Reading has it already. Though it was a tight, close-knit bunch from the jump in 2015, the team really kicked it into gear when Crawford and Knapp came up from Single A and Williams and Thompson arrived in the deadline trade for Hamels.
Since the Hamels trade, Reading went 20-4 after Williams and Thompson joined the team and 6-6 since the calendar flipped to September.
They know they are supposed to win.
“Some people call it arrogance and some people call it cockiness, but there’s a fine line there,” Wathan said. “We have some guys with some swagger. People talk about Jimmy [Rollins] and stuff like that, but he was good and he knew it and he backed it up. These guys we have back it up. They’re good players and they’re confident. If you’re good at something, you should be confident in it no matter if it’s baseball or arithmetic.”
Though the math says the Fightin Phils still have to win two of the next three games on the road, the confidence is still as prevalent as ever.
“We have a lot of talent and we’re a close-knit group. We have a lot of confidence in each other and that helps, too,” Knapp said. “Nobody is really freaking out about anything, we know we can go out and win.”
That’s more than half the battle right there. Better yet, these Reading Fightin Phils know that they will be expected to win when they make it to Philadelphia, too.
They wouldn’t have it any other way.