25 Most Talented Philadelphia Phillies Rosters Never to Win a World Series

Talented teams miss the World Series all the time. It’s a common occurrence. In any one season, you’re going to have at least six very good teams capable of playing in the Fall Classic. Simple math tells us that there isn’t enough room for all of them in the end. Just one. 

So while the 2012 Philadelphia Phillies are unique in the fact that they were so talented—on paper—at the beginning of the season, but missed the postseason all together—they certainly aren’t alone.

They’re not even alone in their own history. For the simple fact that there are a lot of good teams playing for one prize every season, a lot of talented rosters are kept from a World Series title. 

The ’12 version of the Phillies are just one example. Including the train wreck that was the Phils this season, here are 24 others. 

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Picking the Philadelphia Phillies’ All-Postseason Team

Well, this feels strange. 

For the first time since the final day of the 2006 regular season, there will be no postseason baseball in the city of Philadelphia. That’s right. Two teams from the National League East will be heading to the postseason and neither of them will be the Philadelphia Phillies. 

A third place finish here in 2012 will effectively end the Phillies’ string of five consecutive NL East titles and force them on the outside of the window looking in. 

But those five consecutive titles produced some excellent moments and highlighted a number of big time performers. They added to the Phillies’ rich postseason history and pushed most of this club’s core into Philadelphia sports history. 

Since there won’t be a postseason in Philadelphia this year, we’ll take a look back instead. We’ll use each of those postseason moments and other great games in Phillies’ history to build a 25-man roster of this team’s greatest postseason performers. 

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Final Regular Season Grades for All 25 Philadelphia Phillies

“Disappointing.”

That’s a word that you are going to hear a lot over the next couple of weeks when people talk about the Philadelphia Phillies, and it isn’t just going to go away after that time. Whenever the 2012 Phillies are discussed, that’s what they’ll be associated with—disappointment. 

It surely is not unjustified. This is a team that came into the regular season with the highest payroll in the National League. If you include Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Roy Halladay, they were a team with an All-Star at seven different positions. Carlos Ruiz would later make it eight. 

Of course, counting Howard, Utley and Halladay isn’t easy. All three of those players missed a significant amount of time in 2012 and I don’t think it is unfair to say that not one of three performed up to their own, personal expectations. 

It’s hard to win when the middle of your lineup and the ace of your starting rotation are shelved, but when you refer back to that payroll, Plan Bs should be in place. Someone has to shoulder the blame. 

So while there were certainly some bright spots and pleasant surprises this season, without a doubt, the Phillies’ grades must reflect the one overarching emotion that fans are going to feel until spring training opens in February of 2013—disappointment. 

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The Most Disappointing Moment of Each Phillies Player’s 2012 Season

There are plenty of people disappointed with the Philadelphia Phillies right now. 

Sure, the team and its fans are obvious choices. Neither group wants to be in third place right about now, especially since they had the highest payroll in the National League for most of the season. 

How about Roy Halladay’s fans, who want nothing more than to see him get that World Series ring? The same goes for Cliff Lee and his supporters. How about those who expected Jonathan Papelbon’s first season with the Phillies to result in his first ring with a new team? 

How about all of the experts that staked their reputation on picking the Phillies to win the World Series this year—or even to come close? 

It’s been a disappointing year for the Phillies without a doubt, and the effects are far reaching. Here’s the most disappointing moment from every player’s perspective. 

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20 Players Who Only Played with the Philadelphia Phillies for the Money

It’s sadly becoming a way too casual aspect of baseball today—players selling out to the highest bidder. 

Of course, something like that is understandable. In today’s game, millions of dollars are on the line. Players have an opportunity to set up their children’s children for life. You don’t leave millions of dollars on the table because you like another team more. Well, not often anyway.

But baseball is a business. That’s another old cliche that we hear too frequently nowadays. The owners want to make money, the players want to make money and everyone in between wants their fair share of the pie. 

When you throw a baseball town like Philadelphia into the mix, you can pick the players that signed for the money out like a sore thumb. 

The Philadelphia Phillies implore a certain brand of baseball noted for its trademark hustle, blue collar attitude and caution to the wind style. 

When guys struggle to embrace to the top, the float to the top like drops of oil in water. Here are 20 of the most notable cases. 

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25 All-Time Players Who Truly Bled Phillies Red

You don’t get to see an abundant amount of loyalty in the game of baseball. Players don’t often finish their careers in the same place they began, and that’s especially true for today’s game, when players will often wind up playing for the highest bidder. 

So when you see a player spend all of—or even a majority of, nowadays—his career with a single club, it resonates with you. You associate that player with that club and often find yourself thinking, “Man. He was proud to fly that team’s flag.” 

The Philadelphia Phillies have had a few of those players—guys who were proud to wear that signature “P” on their cap and embrace the way the city of Philadelphia enjoyed its baseball. 

They understood what playing baseball in this city was all about: hard work and determination. The fans enjoy a “blue collar” style of baseball, but most importantly, value a player that wants to win. 

Now the question is simple: Who are they? Which players truly bled Phillies red? 

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Playing ‘A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words’ with All 25 Phillies Players

An endless numbers of words have been written about the 2012 Philadelphia Phillies because, let’s be honest, there has been plenty to write about. 

A team with World Series expectations that falls flat on its face early in the season only to recover enough to make a run at the brand-new second NL Wild Card at the end of the season? Come on. It’s a writer’s dream story. 

But there’s only so much you can actually write about each player. You can give the most accurate description in the world, but a picture is worth a thousand words. 

It’s one of life’s inevitable truths: We love words, but we relate to pictures. We can look at a player’s picture and feel his emotion in a way that words can’t describe, and some pictures just do a better job at describing a player’s season. 

So lets have a look. Here’s one picture to describe each player’s season.

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Ranking the 25 Most Famous Philadelphia Phillies Players of All-Time

What’s it take to be famous in this game? 

That almost seems like a rhetorical question when you first hear it; but the more you think about it, the more difficult the response becomes. 

Well, we can narrow it down through process of elimination. You obviously have to be pretty good to be famous. The utility infielder on a specific club or the lowest guy on the depth chart in the bullpen isn’t going to be the first player that comes to mind 20 years from now. 

No. We like to remember the All-Stars and the Cy Young and MVP winners. Those guys are the most memorable—the most famous—because they were too good not to be popular. 

But when you live in the city of Philadelphia, you don’t always grow up listening to stories about the obvious guys. You listen to stories about players who played the game “the right way.” You grow up listening to stories of the slick fielding Larry Bowa, the approach of Johhny Callison, the mammoth home run power of Dick Allen and the unforgettable hustle of Pete Rose. 

So, maybe I should rephrase the question: What does it take to be famous in the city of Philadelphia? When you play sports, anyone who succeeds and plays the game hard has a great chance. 

But before we get into the rankings of the most “famous” players in Phillies‘ history, keep this in mind: We’re not looking for the best. We’re looking for the most famous. 

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25 Most Telling Stats of the Philadelphia Phillies’ 2012 Season

“Train wreck” seems like an appropriate phrase to describe this Philadelphia Phillies club when you think about how things have turned out, but the Phillies have had their good moments this season too. 

They came into the season expecting to be—and expected to be by others—World Series contenders and instead flopped around like fish out of water throughout most of the regular season, only to get hot following the trade deadline and inspire dreams of a wild card berth.  

Sure, they had their excuses. No team is going to cruise through any season with the middle of their lineup and ace on the disabled list for an extended period of time. This game just doesn’t work like that. 

The Phillies probably should have been better than they were, however. The starting pitching, while solid, hasn’t been “elite” (and they’re being paid to be elite). They’ve settled into a comfortable slot just below that. The bullpen has been a disaster at times, and it seems as though any rookie that comes up is shot down pretty quickly. 

But there’s a flip side to that coin as well. The pitching has been excellent at times, and that includes the much maligned bullpen.

Then again, it is hard to score runs for a pitching staff that you expected to be better when you’re replacing several All-Star caliber players with players below the replacement level. But guys like Kevin Frandsen and Erik Kratz have had their time in the sun.

In the end, words are arbitrary. Opinions only go so far. If you really want to know what went wrong (or right) for the Phillies in 2012, let’s have a look at the statistics. 

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25 Reasons for Philadelphia Phillies Fans to Remain Confident About 2013

Citizens Bank Park has looked kind of empty on more than one occasion this season. 

With the way the last couple of seasons have gone for the Philadelphia Phillies, that’s quite the oddity. With an impressive string of division titles, the Phillies had built themselves quite the fanbase. Philadelphia has always been a baseball city.

If you build a good team, the fans will come—and they’ll be loud, supportive and a major advantage during a postseason race. 

But the fans made it clear that they were growing tired of the Phillies’ song and dance this season. Injuries mounted and the replacements were subpar. The organization made questionable moves and the fanbase responded in the best way it knew how—by staying home. 

The Phillies’ impressive sellout streak came to an end this season, and that served as the personification of the fans’ displeasure. 

Maybe it was motivation for the club as well. 

After the streak ended, the Phillies started playing their brand of baseball again. They’ve been one of the best clubs in the game following the July 31 trade deadline and have somehow stormed  back into postseason contention. 

All of a sudden, it feels like playoff baseball in this city again. But that’s just one reason not to give up on this club in 2013. 

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