Philly sports radio host does his best to jinx Phillies division chances

Don't count your chickens before they hatch. The adage has stuck around because it's good advice. In sports, it's especially worth following because jinxes make fools of the overly confident.

Joe Giglio of 94WIP only needed to count the eight game lead the Philadelphia Phillies enjoy in the NL East to put himself at the mercy of the jinx.

“The Phillies are not just 25 games over .500. They’re eight games up in the NL East over the Atlanta Braves,” Giglio said, via Audacy. “The Braves came in here and won the first two games of the season…since then, the Phillies have been 10 games better than the Braves for the better part of two months. This thing hasn’t been close.

“I understand the date…but this division is over. It’s over. The Phillies have won the National League East.”

He's right about the Phillies being the cream of the crop in the division since losing that first series to the Braves, but June just began. We haven't even hit the trade deadline. The halfway point of the season is still 33 games way.

An eight-game lead may seem significant now, but that lead could evaporate in the span of a week. Philadelphia still has to face Atlanta head-to-head 10 more times this year.

Philly radio didn't learn lesson from the Mets

There's ugly precedent for this kind of premature declaration coming back to haunt someone in the media. SNY TV's Sal Licata famously declared the NL East over on May 31, 2022 when the New York Mets had a 10.5-game lead.

Who won the division? The Atlanta Braves.

That should have been a lesson to all that you should never pop the champagne this early in the season. Giglio didn't get the memo.

The Phillies won't play again until Saturday when they battle the Mets in the London Series. That trip alone could be disruptive to the flow of their season with only one day off between the end of the international trip and the beginning of a series at Fenway.