CNN
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When the Philadelphia Phillies won the National League (NL) East for the fifth consecutive year in 2011, they probably didn’t expect they would have to wait too long for their next division title.
Fast forward to Monday night: The Phillies won their first NL East title in 13 years with a 6-2 victory over the Chicago Cubs at Citizens Bank Park.
The Atlanta Braves have been the division’s dominant franchise for the past decade, winning all of the last six titles, but this year Philadelphia has steamrolled the competition. Rob Thomson’s team overtook Atlanta on May 3 and hasn’t looked back since.
Only the Los Angeles Dodgers (93-63) have a better record in the MLB this season than the Phillies (93-64).
“This is what you work for all year,” two-time NL MVP Bryce Harper told NBC Sports Philadelphia from the noisy locker room.
“I’ve played in this division my whole career. It’s the hardest division to win. There are so many good teams in this division, so many good pitchers and hitters and everything. It’s hard to win your division in baseball. It’s hard to go from start to finish. To do that is pretty incredible.”
The Phillies’ attention will now turn to securing a first-round bye, which they can do by winning two of their five remaining games or if the Milwaukee Brewers lose two of their remaining six games.
After that, the Phillies will be in the playoffs for the third year in a row and will hope to do better than they did in 2022, when they lost the World Series 4-2 to the Houston Astros.
The franchise has won the World Series twice: in 1980 and 2008.
“We have experience, we have expectations for ourselves,” designated hitter Kyle Schwarber said, according to MLB.com. “We’ve experienced a lot of different things from the regular season to the postseason. We’re not going to be surprised by anything. We just have to be able to play our game and react to whatever happens.”
Schwarber was instrumental in Monday’s title-clinching game, hitting a solo home run in the third inning to complement JT Realmuto’s two-run home run in the second. It was Schwarber’s 100th RBI of the season – the first time a Phillies player has batted in 100 runs in back-to-back years since Ryan Howard had six straight 100 RBI seasons between 2006 and 2011.
Nick Castellanos’ single later in the third brought Trea Turner home to make it 4-0 before an error by Luis Vázquez allowed Harper to score all the way from second in the fifth.
Schwarber hit a double play in the sixth inning, scoring a run to complete the Phillies’ scoring.
The Cubs came back with two runs in the seventh inning, but the Phils didn’t wait any longer: Castellanos caught a fly ball from Michael Busch, made the last out and started the celebrations.
