Pete Mackanin thinks it means something, and if you examine the last decade he is onto something.
"For the Philadelphia Phillies, I think it was very important that we had a winning spring training because over the last couple years we had not had that," the manager said last week before his team played an exhibition against a collection of legitimate prospects the franchise believes will soon ascend to the big leagues.
That alone is all good. We all thought the worst before the Phillies arrived in spring training in 2014 and 2015, and by the time the team was through with its Grapefruit League schedule, the players had confirmed our greatest fears and probably damaged their own psyches.