Earlier in the season, there was some “should of kept” sentiment regarding Reds’ outfielder Austin Hays. The Phillies acquired him at the 2024 trade deadline, and thanks in part to a serious illness, he didn’t make much of an impact for them. Once the season concluded, the Phillies didn’t seem all that interested in bringing him back, and essentially replaced him with Max Kepler.

Hays signed with the Reds on a modest one-year deal with a mutual option for 2026. At the end of May, it looked like they had found a real bargain. Hays had a .901 OPS which was much higher than what Kepler was putting up.

Then Hays got injured and missed about a month of time. Since his return, Hays has underwhelmed, and his OPS has dropped almost .150 points. He’s been especially dreadful in August, batting just .100 so far in the month.

Oddly, one thing that Hays has done well since returning from the IL is walk. This is ironic since he didn’t record a single base on balls in his 80 plate appearances as a Phillie. (Though he’s stopped even doing that in August, with just one so far this month.)

This isn’t to say that the Phillies made the right choice in going after Kepler over Hays. It seems more like these relatively cheap outfielders are basically interchangeable, and while any of them might have short bursts of success, none of them are really a good answer.

X-Men character of the series

Infectia had the ability to alter another human being’s genetic structure, and this often brought her in conflict with X-Factor. She was a formidable enough villain…and then she caught the Legacy Virus.

The Legacy Virus was a thinly disguised metaphor for AIDS that the X-Men writers introduced in the early ‘90s. It was a virus that targeted and slowly killed mutants and eventually mutated into a form that could infect humans too. The writers didn’t really have a long-term plan in mind for the virus, except that every so often, they needed to kill off a minor character to show that it existed. Infectia was one such sacrifice.

Eventually, the virus was cured, and Colossus was killed in order for the stupid storyline to seem more meaningful than it actually was cure to take effect. But don’t worry, Colossus was brought back to life a couple of years later, and during the Krakoan “death is meaningless” era, Infectia was revived as well.

Additional thought about the series

With the weekend sweep of the Rangers, things seem to be going well for the Phillies. If the season was a movie, the addition of Jhoan Duran would have triggered a montage: The Phillies scoring lots of runs, Duran closing out games, with a few clips of the Mets’ foibles mixed in.

But typically, shortly after these “everything is going well” montages, there’s some sort of setback that pops up and threatens to undo all of their progress. Are the Phillies about to hit some form of adversity that will prevent them from cruising to the National League East title? I will assume no, because baseball doesn’t often follow a movie-like three-act structure.

As for this series, I’m not sure what to expect because I rarely know what to expect when the Phillies play the Reds. (They remain one of the most boring teams to write about, because they’re rarely all that good or bad.) The Reds remain on the edge of playoff contention, thanks to a strong starting rotation. Their offense is nothing special aside from Elly De La Cruz, and of their two offensive trade acquisitions, one has been good (Miguel Andujar) and one has been bad (Ke’Bryan Hayes).

This is a team the Phillies should be able to beat, but there’s always the possibility of that unexpected adversity popping up, setting up a dramatic final month of the season. As exciting as that sounds, I think I’d greatly prefer the whole “cruising to the division title” thing.