World Series, NLCS, NLDS, Wild Card: The Phillies Keep Going Out Earlier

Bryce Harper didn't want to talk about the September slide, or the rotation that never got lined up, or the late homers that forced Game 3. He kept it short in a quiet visiting clubhouse in Atlanta on Thursday night.

You're here to do business. You're here to win games, and we didn't do that.

The Phillies lost 6-2 to the Braves in the deciding game of the National League Wild Card Series. It's their fifth straight postseason, and their fifth straight without a title.

The wrong direction

Look at how each of those seasons ended. In 2022, the Phillies reached the World Series. In 2023 they lost in the NLCS. The next two years ended in the Division Series. Now it's the Wild Card round. The same core of Harper, Kyle Schwarber, J.T. Realmuto, Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola has averaged 91 wins a year over that stretch, and the last championship is still 2008.

"We'd love to win a World Series with these guys," Nola said. "We know what type of players we have, and what we're capable of. [We need to] kind of play good at the right time."

No time to set up

Interim manager Don Mattingly pointed to how they got here. The Phillies didn't clinch a spot until Game 162, so there was no lining up the pitching for Atlanta. "We had to fight to get ourselves in," he said, "and to do what we had to do to get in, we had to do what we had to do basically every game in the series."

There was a twist of history too. Philadelphia knocked out the division-champion Braves in both 2022 and 2023. This year Atlanta again had the NL East title and home field, and this time the Braves got the big hits, starting with Michael Harris II's three-run homer in the first, and Chris Sale closed it on one day of rest.

The Phillies now head into an offseason with an interim manager and a core that isn't getting any younger. That conversation starts now.