Can Citizens Bank Park save the Phillies? They’re counting on it after blowing their edge in Game 2.

ATLANTA — Rhys Hoskins ended up in the dirt. The ball ended up behind him. The moments in between are when everything shifted.

The game.

The series.

The season.

That’s not overreaction. That’s reality. The Phillies entered Game 2 with a window that was propped improbably open. With two out in the sixth inning, the broomstick snapped.

» READ MORE: Phillies’ Zack Wheeler not blaming delay after HBP for unraveling: ‘I just didn’t execute’

The series is not over, but their edge in it is. They had their first ace on the mound. They had their second one on deck. They had a heavily favored opponent reeling from the realization that a best-of-five series gets late awfully early. They have none of that now.

Afterward, there wasn’t anything anybody could say about the pivotal play except that it could have been made. With two outs in the sixth inning, Braves star first baseman Matt Olson hit a sharp ground ball directly at Hoskins, who managed only to redirect its trajectory with a sliding wave.

It wasn’t a routine play, but if it wasn’t an error, then we need a new designation for whatever it was. The official scorer called it a single for the Braves and awarded Olson an RBI. But the Phillies knew what it was. A big out not recorded. I guess BONR works.

“It’s a play that I’ve made before, I’ll make again,” Hoskins said after the Braves evened this National League Division Series, 1-1, with a 3-0 victory in Game 2. “I just didn’t make it tonight.”

That’s all there is to it. On nights like Wednesday night, the team that wins is often the one that makes the plays that are there and manufactures a few that are not. In their first three postseason games, the Phillies were that team. This time, they were not.

In Game 2, the Braves were that team. They’d entered the night having won 16 out of their last 17 games with Kyle Wright on the mound. Against the Phillies, the righty got what little help he needed from a couple of diving defensive plays. Zack Wheeler was a little less perfect, but only a little.

» READ MORE: Hoskins: Misplay that changed Game 2 is ‘play I’ve made before and I’ll make again’

The frustrating part for the Phillies is that the first 14⅔ innings of this series played out exactly how you drew them up when you envisioned their path to the National League Championship Series. If they could just steal Game 1, if they could jump on a Braves team still shaking off their sleep, they’d have Wheeler on the mound to set up a clincher at home for his equally capable No. 2. He did his job: retired the first nine batters, entered the sixth inning at a mere 50 pitches. Then he hit a batter. And walked another. And then came Olson’s grounder.

“You’ve got to give credit to Wright,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said. “Their pitching was pretty good, too. But I thought Wheels was outstanding. He had everything going. I don’t know whether the hit batsman threw him off a little bit or not. He walks Swanson and then there’s a play we should make and then infield hit and another base hit up the middle. Just kind of unravelled. I thought he was outstanding all night.”

Yet the end game is the end game. A loss is a loss. You can ignore the implications, but that doesn’t make them go away.

The Phillies were quick to find the bright side as they packed up their things and prepared for one last night in Atlanta. Nobody had expected them to win Game 1, which leaves the series exactly where you might have hoped it would be as the series shifts to Citizens Bank Park for Games 3 and 4 on Friday and Saturday. They are a wild-card team that now has home-field advantage against the defending World Series champs. They will have Aaron Nola on the mound in front of a crowd that has spent 11 years waiting for another moment such as this.

Yet the Phillies fan base should be plenty familiar with the limits of their impact. The last two playoff games at Citizens Bank Park were both losses, and two of the four before that. The Phillies’ best chance at beating the Braves was to beat them in three games: steal Game 1, then ride your two elite starters the rest of the way.

Now? After Nola in Game 3 will come one of a bunch of bad options in Game 4. Noah Syndergaard, the presumptive choice, pitched an inning in relief on Wednesday night. If it goes to Game 5, Ranger Suárez would be in line for the start five days after struggling through 3⅓ innings in Game 1.

» READ MORE: Phillies should be glad to get a split despite Zack Wheeler’s loss in Game 2 of the NLDS

“There’s a number of different guys that we could start on Saturday,” Thomson said after Syndergaard threw 16 pitches in the eighth inning on Wednesday night. “So we’re working through that. We’ll know that more after the game on Friday because it depends on what happens during that game.”

The atmosphere will be electric. The Phillies will need to accept the charge.