At this very moment two months ago, the Phillies were 7 games behind the Atlanta Braves. Seven teams in the NL had better records than the Phillies - in order, the Braves, Padres, Cardinals, Giants, Reds, Rockies, and Dodgers.
Two months later, the Phillies lead the entire NL by six games and are half a game out of the best record in baseball.
This post is going to be short, so I'm not going into any of the details of how this happened. Here, I'm just going to post the results that lead to this huge lead. Take a look at the standings for the games played over the past two months . . . and smile.
| W | L | Win % | GB | |
| Philadelphia | 43 | 15 | 0.741 | - |
| Houston | 34 | 23 | 0.596 | 8.5 |
| Cincinnati | 33 | 23 | 0.589 | 9 |
| San Francisco | 32 | 24 | 0.571 | 10 |
| Colorado | 31 | 25 | 0.554 | 11 |
| San Diego | 30 | 27 | 0.526 | 12.5 |
| Florida | 29 | 27 | 0.518 | 13 |
| Atlanta | 30 | 28 | 0.517 | 13 |
| Milwaukee | 26 | 28 | 0.481 | 15 |
| Chicago Cubs | 26 | 29 | 0.473 | 15.5 |
| NY Mets | 25 | 31 | 0.446 | 17 |
| Arizona | 24 | 32 | 0.429 | 18 |
| St. Louis | 23 | 32 | 0.418 | 18.5 |
| LA Dodgers | 22 | 34 | 0.393 | 20 |
| Washington | 22 | 34 | 0.393 | 20 |
| Pittsburgh | 19 | 37 | 0.339 | 23 |