All Your Favorite Ex-Phillies Are Out of the MLB Playoffs

Los Angeles Dodgers shortstop Jimmy Rollins against the Chicago White Sox during a spring training baseball game at Camelback Ranch.

Last night, the Dodgers and Mets played a deciding Game 5 in Los Angeles. The Dodgers did not start either of their prominent ex-Phillies, Chase Utley or Jimmy Rollins. And maybe they should have, because the Mets beat the Dodgers, 3-2, to advance to the National League Championship Series. There really aren’t any 2007-2011 Phillies in the playoffs anymore. All we have left to root for is Ben Revere, and he’s on the Blue Jays. Who wants to root for the team that beat the Phillies in 1993? Reliever Ryan Madson is on the Royals.

Utley and Rollins did both pinch hit last night, with Rollins grounding out in the 8th. In the bottom of the 9th, Chase Utley got a fat pitch down the center of the plate. It looked like he’d crushed it off the bat. It was a line out to Curtis Granderson.

That means the big three players the Phillies traded after the 2014 season are all out of the playoffs, with Cole Hamels losing the deciding game for the Texas Rangers earlier this week.

In a way, this is good. It’s been weird to watch Hamels, Utley and Rollins in different jerseys in the playoffs. It’s been even weirder to see guys like Utley and Rollins, in different jerseys, looking old. And failing. Would a younger Utley have crushed that pitch in the bottom of the 9th last night?

So it’s a Mets-Cubs NLCS and a Royals-Blue Jays ALCS, a bunch of teams that haven’t won the World Series in a while. Obviously the rooting interests here is for a Cubs-Royals World Series, but if you have a Canadian girlfriend you can root for Toronto or if your dog is from Queens you can even root for the Mets. But, ugh, no, please don’t let the Mets win.

As a Phillies fan, your World Series pick should probably be the Royals. The Phillies-Cubs rivalry isn’t what it used to be since baseball switched to three divisions, but I’m old enough to remember hating the Cubs. Plus, their futility is funny. And the one time the Phillies and Royals met in the postseason, the Phillies won!