Phillies Nuggets: Easy early schedule could lead to hot start to Kapler era

By Tim Kelly, Sports Talk Philly editor 

When new Philadelphia Phillies manager Gabe Kapler spoke about the team winning a sh*tload of games under his watch, he probably meant over the course of his tenure, not in 2018 specifically. But the first month of the 2018 season looks to be as good of a time as any for the Phillies to start accumulating wins. 

If you combine the Phillies first three games – which will take place in the final three days of March – with April, the team's first month of the season should be the easiest slate of games they plays in 2018, based off of each opponent's 2017 regular season record: 

The Phillies opponents during March/April have a .466 weighted winning percentage, based off of their 2017 records. The weighted winning percentage factors in the amount of times that the Phillies play each team. It does not factor in where the games are played, so it isn't perfect, but it still gives you a good idea of the quality of opponents that the Phillies are scheduled to play. 

To put things in context, March/April is just one of two months during the 2018 season that the Phillies will play a slate of games where their opponents – based on their 2017 record – have a weighted winning percentage below .500: 

On top of April having the lowest weighted winning percentage of any month in the team's 2018 calendar, there's a chance that numerous teams that the Phillies play in April are even worse than they were in 2017. After trading Giancarlo Stanton, Marcell Ozuna and Christian Yelich, the Marlins figure to be at least 10 games worse than the 77-85 record they posted in 2017, if not worse. The Pirates, who traded both Andrew McCutchen and Gerrit Cole this offseason, are likely to regress in 2018. Even the Diamondbacks, the only team the Phillies will play in April that made the playoffs in 2017, are projected by both FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus to regress to a win total in the mid-80s in 2018. 

Two seasons ago, Pete Mackanin's Phillies jumped out to a 14-10 record in April, causing some to begin to ponder how the Phillies should approach the trade deadline, should they still be in contention at that point. Of course, they weren't, as April was the lone winning month that the Phillies had the entire 2016 season. The guess here is that April of 2018 will be a winning month for the club. Like 2016, the Phillies still probably won't make the playoffs. Unlike 2016, April probably won't be the only winning month for the 2018 Phillies. 

The Nuggets

• Baseball Prospectus released their annual PECOTA projections last week. They predicted that the Phillies will go 78-84, while finishing third in the division, behind the Nationals and the Mets. Finishing six games under .500 wouldn't be a sexy season, but it would be the most games that the Phillies have won in a season since 2012, when they went 81-81. 
• Since I last did a 2018 Opening Day lineup projection, I've fallen in love with the idea of J.P. Crawford hitting ninth. Crawford may not hit for a high average, but he's going to get on base a ton because he controls the strike zone, as general manager Matt Klentak likes to say. This would allow you to potentially hit Carlos Santana and Rhys Hoskins in the first two slots, allowing you to get arguably your two best hitters more at-bats, while often having them come to the plate with a runner already on base. It's not something I would expect to see on Opening Day, but my guess would be that Crawford hits in the No. 9 slot a fair amount of times during the 2018 season. 
• The last time that the Phillies had a winning record at Citizens Bank Park was 2013, when they went 43-38 under Charlie Manuel and Ryne Sandberg. Of course, they also went 30-51 on the road that year.