"Phillies! Ready your breakfast and eat hearty... For tonight, we dine in hell! (or at least at Pat's)"

Last Tuesday, a Tony Clark home run helped the Spartans, er, D-Backs felled the Phils, 3-2. The team was suffering through a 3-6 road trip and had fallen to 14-19 on the season. They were closer to the worst team in baseball (5 games ahead of the Nats) than they were to first place in the NL East (6.5 games).

In the last game of the road trip, the Phils road a Ryan Howard pinch-hit grand slam to a 9-3 victory. The Phillies have now won six of seven and with a win tonight, can complete a four-game sweep of the Brewers, who came into the series with the best record in the National League.

During the stretch, Cole Hamels has come into his own as the team ace, winning two games including a perfect game for six innings (which I again mooshed). Hamels now co-leads the NL in wins at 6-1 (with 6-2 Roy Oswalt) and is second in strikeouts (70). He now projects to 23-4 for the season with 270 Ks, which would be the best record for a Phils pitcher 25 years old or younger since Hall-of-Famer Robin Roberts went 28-7 at the age of 25 in 1952.

The Phils have not had a history of success with young pitchers (Pat Combs, anyone?). In fact, there have been only ten seasons in which a Phillie youngster has won at least 15 since the 1950 Whiz Kids:

The Phils have had only six pitchers 25 or under who have won twenty games since the turn of the twentieth century:

But I digress…from the headline you can tell that the Phils have reached the previously unattainable magic number of .500. It took them forty games to do it, but they finally have as many losses as wins. Since starting the season with six losses in their first seven games, the Phils did not come within one game of .500 until two days but came within two games of mediocrity seven times.

One quarter of the season is over, and they finally reached mediocrity.

Of course, the Phils never do what you expect them to do. After losing reigning MVP Howard and half the bullpen to injuries, that's when they go on a tear?!? Meanwhile Greg Dobbs channels the ghost Lou Gehrig with a .471 batting average and a 1.236 OPS in Howard's absence. Go figure.

They now become the 49th team in baseball history to reach .500 no earlier than their fortieth game. In the last ten years, just the 2005 Pirates (reaching .500 in game 60 en route to a 67-95 season) and the 2001 Marlins (game 66, 76-86 record) have reached .500 later.

Those teams have averaged an 82-80 record over the course of the season and just two, the 1914 Miracle Braves and the '74 Pirates have made the playoffs and just one (the Braves) have won a Series.

By the way, the 1985 version of the Phils (think John Felske and GlennBo) hold the dubious record of reaching .500 the latest of any team in major-league history, in their 136th game. After reaching 68-68, however, they went 7-19 down the stretch to end up fifth in the NL East. Here are the twelve latest teams to reach .500:

Below are the best records for all teams that reached .500 no earlier than game 40. The best are the '14 Braves who did not reach .500 until their 91st game (45-45-1) unbelievably went 49-14 (.778) thereafter. Don't expect that from the Phils: