Phillies are doing something different to buck a losing trend for 1st-round bye teams in Division Series
Having a first-round bye has been a burden in the expanded playoff format, but the Philadelphia Phillies are not treating it that way.
In the days leading up to Game 1 of the 2024 National League Division Series, the Phillies have added their twist in preparation for their first playoff contest. Philadelphia, smack dab in the middle of five days off, will play a simulated intrasquad game Wednesday afternoon.
There will be no fans in attendance. The hitters' walk-up music will be played, the scoreboard will be on and there will be pumped-in crowd noise around Citizens Bank Park to get that postseason feel.
Oh, and there will be a wager on the game to make things interesting.
"I'm not sure what they got," Kody Clemens said with a smile. "I'm not sure what they got. I definitely think there's something going on."
The four captains for the game are Bryce Harper, Trea Turner, Kyle Schwarber and J.T. Realmuto. Harper and Turner are the captains for one team, and Schwarber and Turner are the captains for the other team. The full rosters are unknown, but Clemens was picked to be on Schwarber's team, and Austin Hays was selected to be on Harper's team.
There was a draft. Players were notified of their selections afterward.
"It gives us a position where we're going hard," Phillies general manager Dave Dombrowski said. "The players realize, through the manager Rob Thomson and the coaching staff, that we're not just out here showing up for five days. We're going at it high level. We're going intensity.
"I think the players, knowing them, they realize that. They know they need to do that. I think the intensity level and emphasis of that is extremely important. The constant message was you really need to work with intensity and not just come and show up."
The Phillies' intrasquad game is a different approach from what other teams have tried in the past. Since the expanded playoff format began in 2022, only three of the eight teams that had the first-round bye have advanced past the Division Series. This has never happened in the National League.
Philadelphia has contributed to two of those defeats, beating the Atlanta Braves in the NLDS in consecutive years.
"I can't say there's anything that we have learned specifically (from them)," Dombrowski said. "I'm sure they were as ready as they possibly could be. They tried to do things to bring people into the stadium, but we decided not to do that.
"We had talked about it, but we figured we would try to duplicate as live a game as we possibly could tomorrow. But I don't think there's anything specifically I would do to say we picked up from them."
The approach is different from what the Baltimore Orioles did last season, another organization that bowed out in the Division Series. The Orioles are the only American league team to have a bye and lose the Division Series.
"We got some competitive stuff going on around the clubhouse between the teams," Austin Hays said. "I think that's gonna be really good just for the fire side of it and it's not just going through the motions out there. We're going to be playing for something."
The intrasquad game will be the best game no one knows about. This is how the Phillies are preparing for Saturday, as the first-round bye is uncharted territory for the franchise.
"We're going to get at-bats off guys, even if it's our own guys," Hays said. "Try to keep up as many game-speed things as possible without overtaxing ourselves. I think what we're doing right now is the perfect way to go about it and prepare."