The Phillies got outfielder Derek Hill from the Chicago White Sox on June 11, the day after Adolis García threw a ball from right field and, as it would turn out, tore his right latissimus dorsi, which knocked him out for the season.

I have been referring to this injury as tearing his own arm off, which is not literally true, but which is much closer to true than you would ever want the idea that you ripped your own arm off to be, for yourself or for an outfielder on your team.

Leading up to the trade deadline, all I wanted for the Phillies was a starting pitcher. Please get a starter, please get a starter, please get a starter, my brain muttered, despite the fact that they insist upon not consulting me at all before they do things, which is a real insult to my several years of paying attention to the team.

My hierarchy of needs (Phillies edition), where a starting pitcher is water, a left-handed middle reliever is love and belonging, and a great right fielder is self-actualization, was based on a couple of things. The big two were the Malaise of Aaron Nola, a sad story now a couple of seasons old, and the Protracted Elevation of Andrew Painter, a drama in which fans are still trying to work out whether we are waiting for Cristopher Sánchez Part 2 (people do not always remember he took a while to become fully nasty as a pitcher) or, you know. Godot.

I had a lot of opportunities to ponder the nature of baseball fandom sitting in the stands for three straight Phillies-Orioles games in Baltimore. The Phillies had the worst record in baseball since the All-Star break coming into the weekend; they’d gone from contending for the NL East lead to clinging to a wild card spot, and it was hard not to wonder whether they were already off the cliff and in the air, Wile E. Coyote-style.

During the game on Friday, which the Phillies lost 6-4, I spent a lot of time thinking about why I wasn’t angry. Wasn’t everything going wrong? Wasn’t the season, and perhaps the whole era, kind of slipping away? Don’t I see people every day condemning their own teams as bums and losers, wanting them all traded? Why did I mostly feel a possibly perverse desire to big-sister this bunch of professional athletes, like, “You got this, I believe in you.” I tend to be disappointed for them, not in them. I certainly know the cause is not optimism, because I am not optimistic. In fact, I inherited a certain tendency to conclude my team is going to lose the minute anything bad happens.