MLB playoffs 2022 — How Phillies saved their season

PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES SLUGGER Bryce Harper didn’t quite get his birthday wish.

All season long, Harper had said he wanted to still be playing on his 30th birthday, which was on Sunday. That day came and went without the Phillies on the field — but only on a technicality.

It’s mid-October, and Philadelphia is still playing baseball — and playing it as well as it has all year. After stunning the Atlanta Braves in four games in the National League Division Series, the Phillies weren’t playing a Game 5 on Harper’s birthday; they were flying to San Diego, where they’ll face the Padres on Tuesday night in Game 1 of an unlikely NL Championship Series between two teams that entered the postseason as the league’s No. 5 and 6 seeds.

It wasn’t an easy journey for a Phillies team that, in five short months, went from an under-.500 team riddled by injuries to a serious playoff contender.

But Harper — who was sidelined himself for two months with a broken thumb — never lost faith in his team.

“He said, ‘We ain’t losing,'” Philadelphia first baseman Rhys Hoskins recalled after the Phillies’ series-clinching win over the visiting Braves on Saturday. “He’s been saying it since the first day in St. Louis [during the wild card series]. I think it’s the belief that he has in us. It’s the belief we have in each other.”

LIKE MOST POSTSEASON TEAMS, that belief began for Philadelphia in spring training. But even the Phillies might admit that it waned early in 2022.

During spring training, the Phillies figured they’d overcome any defensive woes with a potent offense. But the team got off to a rocky start, dropping to 22-29 on June 1 under veteran manager Joe Girardi. President of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski sensed the Phillies needed a change. The Phillies were built to win now but were doing anything but.

“Sometimes, when you make a change in leadership. you get just a little different feeling in the clubhouse,” Dombrowski told ESPN. “It’s not necessarily negative about…