Former star first baseman and 2006 National League MVP Ryan Howard doesn’t see the window closing for this Phillies group the way it did for him and his teammates in 2011 when he tore his Achilles on the final play of a Game 5 National League Division Series loss.
Neither Howard nor those Phillies, the winners of five straight NL East titles and the 2008 World Series, were ever the same after that season. Like that 2011 team, the 2024 Phillies lost in the NLDS as they were bounced a round earlier than the previous year, two rounds earlier than the year before that.