On the morning of July 30, the Philadelphia Phillies seemed out of it. They were eight wins behind the Reds in the National League wild card race, and there were eight teams between them and the Reds. The starting pitching was in shambles — Jon Lieber and Randy Wolf were both coming back from injuries, and former middle relief ace Ryan Madson had been wildly inconsistent as a starting pitcher. In light of those sobering facts, that very day Phillies GM Pat Gillick dealt star right fielder Bobby Abreu and journeyman starter Cory Lidle to the Yankees for a package of future-minded maybes. He subsequently discarded veteran third baseman David Bell to the Brewers and reliever Rheal Cormier to the Reds in minor deals, at which point it really seemed Gillick had packed it in for 2006.

Little more than three weeks later, he has to unpack all over again, because the Phillies are back in this thing despite the modest dismantling, only 2.5 games behind the Reds, and with only the Diamondbacks and Padres in the immediate vicinity.

After such a quick reversal of fortune, the question is, how is a team supposed to plan and manage for this sort of uncertainty? If, two-thirds of the way into the season, you’re tearing apart your roster, and three weeks later, you’re back in the thick of things, what sort of decision tree is a major league general manager supposed to use to chart out his team’s course? Within the hammerand-tongs infighting of the long season, it’s easy to lose sense of even the bestlaid plans built around growing from within, scouting, player development, the June amateur draft, and foreign academies, because staring you in the face is baseball’s answer to Lotto, a shot at becoming an instant winner. Welcome to the combined virtues of parity and the wild card: even in a 16-team league, the only real certainty is that three — the Cubs, the Nationals, and the Pirates — are out of it.

Consider Gillick’s situation. Where did the reversal of fortune come from? In part, it was the Phillies’ 15–8 run since dealing Abreu. To no small extent, that’s been a product of the Phillies amazing hitting since the All-Star break. Young slugger Ryan Howard has hit 15 homers since the break while slugging .722, and shortstop Jimmy Rollins has added 10 more of his own. But they’re only the signature successes in a lineup that’s gotten great work out of reserves put on the spot.

The most surprising addition has been the product of the decision to move Abreu — the deal created regular playing time for veteran outfielder David Dellucci, a fine hitter, but not somebody that anybody was betting would hit .341 AVG/.450 OBA/.659 SLG over the last month.The core of a strong offense was still there, even after the Abreu deal, and it got hot at a convenient time. The Phillies lead baseball with 6.9 runs scored per nine innings since Abreu’s last game with the team on July 29, an improvement of more than 1.5 runs per nine on their season average. Even with small sample size caveats, that offense is smoking.

The pitching has come around as well, with Madson providing the club with significantly better bullpen depth now that he’s back in a relief role. They also have had the benefit of Lieber rattling off four straight quality starts in August. While pitching in the Show was supposed to be in preparation for better days ahead, rookie phenom Cole Hamels and Rule 5 pick Fabio Castro have shown that the future is now. Hamels did this by tossing five straight quality starts and Castro by pitching 14.1 scoreless innings since coming over from Texas in a minor deal.

Even so, Wolf and putative staff ace Brett Myers have struggled, and Gillick recognized that while his roster had replaced Abreu surprisingly well enough, his pitching staff hadn’t conjured up a replacement for Lidle on its own. So, rather than let it ride, Gillick reversed course to see if he might not just win this thing after all, going back out on the market to add a starting pitcher, former Mariners ace Jamie Moyer, through a waivers deal. Moyer may not be the talent he was of old, but he still represents an upgrade on Lidle, one the Phillies might not have made if they hadn’t first quit on the season last month.

The dilemma is whether or not Gillick was right both times — to give up, and then find new hope — or wrong in either case. Ditching Abreu and Lidle for nothing of value was controversial enough at the time, but given the franchise’s moribund farm system, there was an argument to be made sense for trading for prospects, although ideally you’d have hoped for better ones than those they got from the Yankees. Adding Moyer also makes sense, however, especially in a league where anybody who gets to October might have a shot now that the Mets are coping with questions about both Pedro Martinez and Tom Glavine.

What’s fun — or maddening, for some analysts — is that it boils down to being a product of little more than three wins, because the Phillies’ 15–8 record since the Abreu deal, nice as it is, has been remarkable because it’s one of only two good records among the 12 teams racing for the wild card plus the Central and Western division titles. The Dodgers’ 17–4 run has gotten much more attention, but the Phillies’ mark is the only other record from among the pack above .500.

GMs join franchises with plans, longterm plans, and very long-term plans, and Gillick knows he’s taken up a multi-year challenge to rebuild a franchise that has failed time and again. Nevertheless, his Phillies have managed to slip into the hunt this year, even if it is was more by accident than design.

Ms. Kahrl is a writer for Baseball Prospectus. For more state-of-the-art analysis, visit baseballprospectus.com.