"Smoked by a real team"?
Come on. The Dodgers were 1 game away from beating a very tough Houston team in the World Series in 2017. Start Wood at home that year instead of F. Yu, and there's a good chance the Dodgers would have followed the Cubs as World Series champs. The Dodgers have also made back-to-back World Series, so they're 4-0 in NL playoff series since 2017.
The Cubs, as I'm sure you remember, almost shit the bed anyway, going down 3-1 before the Indians choked it off. Had the Cubs been facing a team like the 2017 Astros or 2018 Red Sox, they wouldn't have gotten so lucky.
The Phllies made some tremendous mistakes in those years, and totally fucked the coming decade thanks to some awful contracts they gave to aging players. That's why they haven't seen the postseason in 7 straight seasons, and it's about to be eight, despite the fact that two wildcards makes it relatively easy to get there if your team is decent.
The postseason is such a crapshoot that it's foolish to mortgage the future based upon the chance to win a World Series. Sure, it's smart to load up on a few useful players where you don't have to give away too much, but the Phillies were not the team whose blueprint should be followed.
Incidentally, your Cubs have been a tremendous disappointment. People were talking "dynasty" in 2016, and now your team is fighting with 3 other mediocre clubs to grab the second wildcard with an 86-win type record. They just haven't been the same since the Dodgers crushed them in the 2017 NLCS, so it makes sense that you hate the Dodgers so much.
I would much rather have a perpetually competitive team to root for than one who spikes a World Series or two, and then sucks for a long time.