Red October gets better and redder as Orion Kerkering deals and Bryce Harper homers for Phillies

ATLANTA — This October couldn’t be going any better, or get any redder.

For the second year in a row the Phillies stole Game 1 of the NL Division Series in Atlanta, this time, 3-0.

Last year, they rode this momentum to the World Series. This year, their roster is different. Their spirit remains the same.

“We know we don’t play a perfect brand of baseball,” said catcher J.T. Realmuto. “There’s plenty of mistakes we make throughout a game, or throughout a season. But we have confidence, in the right moment, in a big spot, we’re going to step up.”

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Bryce Harper stepped up; on base four times, two runs scored, a stolen base and a bomb. Rookie reliever Orion Kerkering stepped up, with a scoreless, breathless seventh. Trea Turner stepped up: a hit, a run, two steals, and a diving double-play for the ages. The bullpen stepped up: 5⅓ scoreless innings against the best offense since the 1927 Yankees, or the 1975 Reds.

The Braves won 104 games with prolific hitters. Saturday night, the Braves brought bashers. The Phillies brought heart.

“This, team, to a man, has this innate toughness. Really resilient,” Thomson said. “They just keep fighting.”

The fight gets easier, on paper. To continue the best-of-five series, the Braves have to beat either Zack Wheeler in Game 2 on Monday night or Aaron Nola, who starts Wednesday in Game 3 in Philadelphia in front of 46,000 crimson-clad maniacs in Citizens Bank Hell.

There are reinforcements, too.

Kerkering was drafted last summer and rocketed through the entire minor league system, but he was icy. He needed just eight pitches for three outs in the seventh. During the break between innings, the ballpark speakers blasted the anthem, “Legends Are Made.” Indeed.

Kerkering walked leadoff hitter Ronald Acuna, Jr. to start the eighth and gave way to lefty Matt Strahm, who gave up a hit but escaped with a deflating double play off the bat of Ozzie Albies. Turner dived to his left, flipped to Bryson Stott from his belly, and when Stott turned and fired the inning ended.

“There was a bunch of big outs,” said Braves manager Brian Snitker, understandably thunderstruck. “Probably none bigger than Ozzie’s that Turner dove and turned the double play.”

That 2-0 lead in the seventh was authored, mostly, by Harper, who walked and scored in the fourth, then homered in the sixth off Braves ace Spencer Strider. Harper was 1-for-6 in the two wild-card wins Tuesday and Wednesday over the Marlins, whom starters Wheeler and Nola dominated.

Ranger Suárez cruised through 3⅔ innings — scoreless, obviously — before Thomson and the Analytics Gang pulled him with two men on in the fourth. Jeff Hoffman, José Alvarado, and Seranthony Domínguez preceded Kerkering and Strahm, and, while each allowed at least one runner, none allowed even one run. Craig Kimbrel set the Braves down 1-2-3 in the ninth for the save. Domínguez got the win.

It was nothing short of incredible.

» READ MORE: Those famous standing ovations for Trea Turner energized him — and fired up the Phillies as well

The Braves had the best offense in the analytics era. They tied a major-league record with 307 homers, and set one with a .501 slugging percentage. They hoped all of this balk-bashing would interrupt 33 years of postseason malaise, in which they’d reached the postseason 22 times but won the World Series just twice. It was the Phillies who doused their hopes twice, with upstart, charismatic clubs in the 1993 NLCS and the 2022 NLDS, which took four games.

Each time, the Braves watched the Phillies in the World Series. The Braves now have won 18 NL East titles, but they’re two losses from putting another brick in their wall of futility. If you’ve never smelled the odor of 43,000 people sighing in despair of a ballclub that never fails to disappoint, then you should’ve been at Truist Park on Saturday night when Domínguez struck out their No. 1 and No. 2 hitters in the sixth. It stank like that stretch of I-95 that runs through southeast Georgia.

In hindsight it might seem that Thomson’s many decisions were inarguable. Not so. In the fourth he pulled Suárez, a lefty, who’d allowed one hit and three base runners but would face 40-homer, right-handed DH Marcel Ozuna — who, for what it’s worth, was 3-for-14 with five strikeouts and no homers against Suárez.

Thomson’s rear end wound up over a fire when Hoffman, a right-hander, walked Ozuna and loaded the bases. Hoffman pulled his manager from the flames when he struck out left-handed hitter Michael Harris II to end the inning.

» READ MORE: ‘We’re built for this’: Bryson Stott and Aaron Nola lead the Phillies to inevitable NLDS battle with the Braves

Domínguez had the fifth, and he allowed two hits, but with one out he froze putative MVP Acuña Jr. with a 98 mph sinker on the inside black, then ran a full-count, sinking fastball eight inches from the left edge of the zone all the way, backdoor, to the middle of the plate, at which Austin Riley swung feebly, with no real chance of success.

He had no chance. Neither did the Braves, once again fearsome for six months but feckless come fall. They’ll grasp any straw.

Consider their reaction to a catcher’s interference call during J.T. Realmuto’s ninth-inning at-bat, which forced in the final run. The Braves challenged, lost, and their fans — a ballpark record 43,689 of them — saw the replays and lost their collective mind.

These fans usually are a placid bunch by the ninth inning, anesthetized by warpath chants, Bar-be-que, and Bud Light. But on Saturday they reached a tipping point. They threw dozens of cans and bottles onto the field, delaying the game by eight minutes. They’d had enough. Can’t blame them.

After all, it’s been 33 years. It’s the Phillies. It’s Red October.

And it’s only getting redder.