On Wednesday morning, I wrote that the Phillies’ offense is not very good. In two games since then, the Phillies’ offense put up 21 runs against Mets pitchers.

I am not the type to cling to an argument just for the weird satisfaction of convincing myself I’m always right. I’ve gotten plenty of stuff wrong, in print and otherwise, and I’m more than willing to admit it when I do. But I’m not rolling back on this one yet.

It’s two games. Two games, two games, two games, two games.

In the paper this morning, the theme of basically every baseball article is: “Can you believe that ____ is happening?” Can you believe the Red Sox and Rays are 0-6? Can you believe the Mets’ pitching has been terrible? Can you believe AJ Burnett is 2-0?

Yes, I can easily believe all of these things because we’re six games deep into the baseball season and all sorts of odd stuff happens over every six-game stretch. After six games last year, Jeff Francoeur had a .538 on-base percentage. Pick any one week of any season and isolate that week’s numbers. Look at the league leaders and the teams with the best records for that week. They will very likely be very different from the full season’s.

The glory of the baseball season lies in its length. Over 162 games, the great players and great teams distinguish themselves. Fleeting hot streaks and stretches of good luck are balanced with slumps and misfortune, and in the end we have no trouble identifying the awesome and the terrible. Six games in the course of a 162-game season tell us very little.

In the case of the Phillies, outside of Shane Victorino and Carlos Ruiz every one of their hitters is playing well above his head. Wilson Valdez, Ryan Howard and Placido Polanco all have OPSes over 300 points higher than their career lines. Neither Jimmy Rollins nor Raul Ibanez is likely to maintain an OBP above .400.

I know just citing sample size over and over again makes for boring blog posts, and for that I apologize. But I’m not going to invent some narrative suggesting Wilson Valdez is suddenly an MVP-caliber hitter because he had a nice week. Nor am I going to buy into talk that the Red Sox and Rays suck, for that matter. We need to let this all play out a little before we can draw any real conclusions.