Look, I love the Phillies, but the Diamondbacks deserve to go to the World Series and the Phillies don't.
The Phillies hustled through Game 1 and 2, and then went to Phoenix brimming with over-confidence and played sloppy baseball. Ben Davis put it best... they punted when they got to Arizona... "we'll get 'em tomorrow"... "we'll get 'em when we come back to Philly". All that dancing around wasn't "staying loose"... it was a team that lost its intensity... who thought they'd steamroll over the underdog. The Diamondbacks hustled... they played hungry. The Phillies played with heart and hustle against the Braves, then followed it up with a brand of lazy baseball that suggested that they thought this series was over after the first two games.
Thomson refused to make any changes to adapt to the situation on the field. Castellanos looked like he was taking swings in Home Run Derby at balls that he wasn't anywhere close to hitting. Turner repeatedly took lazy swings to balls that were a foot outside of the zone. With those two and Rojas, essentially 1/3 of the lineup was an automatic out after Game 2. Thomson let his 18 million/yr starter sit on the bench for the entire series while a kid with a total of three innings of MLB experience in the regular season was brought in and was ineffective three times, not to mention the fact that he allowed Kimbrel to come into games in high leverage situations when it was clear two months ago that he didn't have it anymore. The starting pitching was solid throughout the series, but aside from that, this team could not get their shit together, from the manager on down.
If there's any positive to take from this series, maybe it will be the end of hearing Dancing On My Own, which may be the dumbest rally song ever adopted by a pro sports team.
