Paul Hagen: Big move possible but unlikely for Phils

THREE HOURS before the first pitch, Charlie Manuel sat in the dugout as the players filtered onto the field to begin stretching and endured his daily give-and-take with reporters.

"Was that our real team last year or were we just on a really hot roll?" the manager asked at one point, a reference to the extraordinary mid-September through late-October streak that lifted the Phillies in quick succession to the division title, the National League pennant and the world championship.

A few minutes later, Ruben Amaro Jr. sat in almost the same spot and, unprompted, revisited almost the same subject. "Were we the best team in baseball last year?" the general manager asked rhetorically. "I don't know. But I do know that once you get into the dance, you give yourself a chance."

Now, as interesting as such speculation might be over a cold postgame brew, it hardly matters. The Phillies won the World Series last year so they were, by definition, the best team in baseball last season. The team wearing the big gaudy rings gets bragging rights. That's just the way it works.

At the same time, the eerie coincidence of having both manager and general manager wondering aloud along the same lines, one after the other, opens the door to a couple related lines of inquiry. Such as:

Are the Phillies, as currently constituted, good enough to assure themselves of earning a berth in the postseason?

Has a front office that has historically - and openly - been content to try to get lucky when it matters most instead of making the sort of big, over-the-top move at the deadline that fans crave changed its philosophy?

No and no.

It tends to have become lost in the flurry of World Series trophy, photo-ops, nonstop championship-related marketing, White House hobnobbing, running tally of the total number sellouts at the Bank (33 and counting!) and endless self-congratulatory promotions. But until they swept the Brewers in a four-game series in the waning weeks of the schedule that triggered a 13-3 run and closed the regular season with a flourish, it was a coin flip at best that the Phillies wouldn't be sitting home watching the postseason on television.

The Phillies passed the mathematical midpoint of their season Tuesday night. Asked yesterday to assess the first 81 games, Amaro's evaluation was unflinching.

"Clearly, we're not playing like a championship club right now," he said.