Phillies beat the Braves in the 11th as Nick Castellanos plays the hero

Castellanos also hit an RBI double in the sixth inning. He accounted for all three of the Phillies’ runs.

Nick Castellanos (second from left) is mobbed by teammates after he drove in the winning run with an 11th-inning single against the Braves.Read moreElizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer

Published Sept. 1, 2024, 10:47 p.m. ET

They have squared off 53 times now across these last three seasons. If they meet for a 54th, it will be in the playoffs. Again. For a third year in a row.

Phillies-Braves, Round 3?

Yes, please.

What baseball-loving soul wouldn’t want more of this? Taut, cuticle-chomping showdowns with late-inning drama that will gray your hair? Inject them directly into our veins. Sure, a few of the names on the rosters have changed, but the two best teams in the National League East never disappoint.

The latest chapter, played Sunday night in front of a sellout crowd at Citizens Bank Park and a national television audience, took more than nine innings to decide. It didn’t end until the 11th, when Nick Castellanos — who tied it up to begin with — shot a two-out, two-strike single up the middle to score Kody Clemens from third base and send the Phillies spilling from the dugout to revel in a 3-2 victory.

“This was a fun game,” Castellanos said after emerging from a mosh pit of his teammates. “Just a big series. The crowd was electric. And to be able to come through there was awesome.”

Big series? Well, it just might’ve dashed the Braves’ shot to win a seventh consecutive division title. The Phillies stretched their lead to seven games — one more than it was when they traveled to Atlanta 12 nights earlier — with 25 to play.

So, it isn’t premature to dust off the magic number calculator. It’s 19, for the record. Any combination of Phillies wins and Braves losses totaling 19 will clinch the Phillies’ first NL East crown since 2011.

“I don’t really like talking about that too much, only because there’s so many games left,” said Castellanos, who joined Tony Taylor, Juan Samuel, and Jean Segura as the only Phillies since 1920 with four walk-off hits in a season. “There’s so much opportunity that we still have to solidify our spot where we want to be for October.

“We had a successful series. No question it was big. But there’s still a lot of baseball left before playoffs.”

Fair enough. Let’s talk, then, about Castellanos.

Remember when he was among the least productive hitters in baseball? He didn’t collect his first extra-base hit until the season’s 21st game. On Memorial Day, he was batting .198 with a .573 OPS. It was only by the grace of the Phillies’ 45-19 start that he was spared the fans’ white-hot wrath.

Well, since a two-hit game on June 17, Castellanos is batting .298 with 30 extra-base hits and an .851 OPS. He has four walk-off hits and 76 RBIs. And he has been uncharacteristically consistent, too. Known for his roller-coaster peaks and valleys, he batted .276, .275, and .275 and slugged .486, .484, and .471 in June, July, and August, respectively.

“I’m really happy for him,” manager Rob Thomson said. “Because he’s just worked so hard to get his swing back and get going.”

Castellanos credits the help of assistant hitting coach Rafael Peña and outfield instructor Paco Figueroa. Since the middle of May, he has taken extra swings on the field before batting practice almost every day “so I don’t feel like I’m searching for a swing” when the game starts.

There was no better manifestation of the work than Castellanos’ at-bats in the sixth and 11th innings against the Braves. In both cases, he got behind two strikes. He wasn’t fazed. He stayed back on a slider from starter Spencer Schwellenbach for a tying two-run single, then jumped on a fastball from reliever Grant Holmes for the decisive hit.

“It makes me want to take [pitches] so I have two strikes more often,” Castellanos said, smiling through a deadpan comic delivery. “I think both of those at-bats I got settled in.”

Castellanos pointed to a ninth-inning at-bat against Braves closer Raisel Iglesias. He swung at three consecutive sliders — all low and away, none in the strike zone. It’s the scouting report for getting him out. He’s prone to chasing off-speed pitches.

“I’m excited, obviously. I want to hit,” Castellanos said. “And then, he doesn’t give me anything, so he takes advantage of my aggressiveness. Next [at-bat], I wasn’t going to make the same mistake.”

So, against Holmes, he laid off a two-strike slider in the dirt. He fouled off another one. And when Holmes gave him a belt-high fastball, well, he pounced.

Trailing 2-0 in the sixth inning, the Phillies tied it with a two-out spark against Schwellenbach. After Trea Turner singled and Bryce Harper chipped an opposite-field double on a curveball, Castellanos split the gap in left-center for a two-run double on a two-strike slider.

From there, the bullpens took over. And they were brilliant.

The Phillies passed the baton from Orion Kerkering to Jeff Hoffman to Matt Strahm to Carlos Estévez for five scoreless innings. Strahm loaded the bases with one out in the ninth and Houdini’d his way out. Estévez, the closer, pitched two innings for only the second time this season and stranded the automatic runner both times.

Estévez is new to this Phillies-Braves grudge, having been acquired in a deadline trade from the Angels. But he’s intoxicated by the intensity of these games. After throwing only seven pitches in the 10th inning, he told Thomson that he was ready for more and cranked up his fastball to 99 mph.

“We don’t get cold feet. That’s what it looks like,” Estévez said. “That’s a really good thing to have, a group of guys like this that can go against anyone on the other side and compete like that. I really like that.”

The Phillies (81-56) moved one game ahead of the Brewers for the No. 2 seed in the NL playoffs, which comes with a first-round bye. They capped a 5-2 homestand and finished with a 6-7 record in the season series against the Braves.

If they meet again, it will be in the playoffs.

Sign us up.