‘You can’t let that happen’ yet the Phillies’ bullpen continues to waste leads — and Bryce Harper’s heroics

ATLANTA — Bryce Harper stood with his back against a wall in a hallway adjacent to a funereal locker room within the Phillies’ clubhouse here late Tuesday night and said all the same things about leaving behind the sting of a walk-off 6-5 loss, and turning the page, and coming back tomorrow, and blah, blah, blah.

Surely, he has the whole spiel memorized.

Harper would have singlehandedly carried the Phillies to a victory over the Braves. He tied the game with a hustle double in the sixth inning, lined an RBI single in the seventh, and crushed a go-ahead two-run homer against Atlanta closer Kenley Jansen in the ninth. It was a tour de force for the reigning National League MVP.

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But Tuesday night marked Harper’s 394th game with the Phillies, and it ended like so many others: with the bullpen fumbling a late-inning lead and a shoulders-slumped trudge to the clubhouse after a demoralizing walk-off loss.

By now, the sound of an opponent celebrating on the field must be to Harper what the ringing alarm clock was to Phil Connors in Groundhog Day.

“You said it,” Harper said.

How can this keep happening? Since 2019, the Phillies’ bullpen has a 4.77 ERA, fourth-worst in baseball behind the Nationals (5.13), noncompetitive Orioles (5.20), and Rockies (5.25). The Phillies have blown 69 saves, tied for fourth. They have been outscored 690-628 from the seventh inning on — 180-149 in the ninth inning alone. And they have been walked off 22 times, accounting for 18.3% of their losses on the road.

It’s pathological. The relievers have changed, from Tommy Hunter and Pat Neshek, to Héctor Neris and David Robertson, to Brandon Workman and Archie Bradley. Seranthony Domínguez is the only member of the 2022 bullpen who remains from 2019. So, too, have the managers and pitching coaches. Gabe Kapler and Chris Young made the calls in 2019. Since then, it has been Joe Girardi, first with Bryan Price and now Caleb Cotham.

But the Phillies have gotten their guts ripped out in the late innings so many times that it’s difficult to not become desensitized, even numb, to the whole thing.

“If you want to be a championship-caliber team, you can’t let that happen,” Harper said. “I don’t mind guys being mad. I don’t mind anybody being upset or anything like that. But once it’s over, it’s done. Once you’re done thinking about it, you need to leave it in there and don’t take it with you. You can’t let it creep into tomorrow or anything like that. It’s got to be done tonight.”

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True. And the Phillies are well-practiced at resilience. Often, though, the roots of a late-inning crusher are planted during the previous game, which is precisely how ninth-inning novice Nick Nelson wound up on the mound with the game on the line Tuesday night.

Girardi arrived in Philadelphia with a reputation for sensible bullpen management. His overriding commandment: Early in the season, he doesn’t call on relievers to pitch more than two days in a row, the idea being that conservative usage in April, May, and June leads to better health and effectiveness in July, August, and especially September. It isn’t an uncommon approach for managers in 2022.

“That’s how the game has always been since I’ve been playing,” Harper said. “When a guy’s down, a guy’s down. There’s nothing I can do.”

It only reinforces the need for a deep bullpen. Phillies closer Corey Knebel pitched for the Dodgers last season and remarked Wednesday that they “had big-league [caliber] relievers in triple A.” But the Phillies have neither developed enough pitching in the minor leagues nor found undervalued relievers outside the organization to give Girardi ample options.

Girardi would have called for Knebel as soon as Harper banged his go-ahead homer off the facade of a restaurant in right field. But Knebel threw 23 pitches Sunday at home against the Dodgers and nine Monday night in Atlanta in a non-save situation (the Phillies had a four-run lead in the ninth inning of a game that was tightening).

Asked late Tuesday night if he could have pitched again, Knebel mumbled that he was unavailable. But even if he felt like he could, Girardi wouldn’t have allowed it.

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Girardi explained that setup man Jeurys Familia wasn’t available, either, after appearing in three of the previous four games, including a 23-pitch outing here Monday night. Domínguez didn’t pitch Monday night and threw only 11 pitches Sunday, but Girardi said he needed another day. The Phillies are being extra careful with Domínguez, who missed most of the last two seasons after Tommy John elbow surgery.

The reasonable second-guess was Girardi’s choice to stick with Nelson over lefty José Alvarado, whose typically erratic command and early-season struggles (7.30 ERA) are offset by his late-game experience. But Girardi reasoned that he preferred Nelson against the Braves’ string of right-handed batters.

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Girardi, like Kapler before him, has become a frequent target of fans who are fed up with the late-inning losses and overall performance of a team that for three years can’t seem to shake a .500-ish record. But multiple high-ranking sources said recently that the Phillies haven’t discussed an in-season managerial change, and president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski reiterated as much this week.

“Joe’s been fine,” Dombrowski said. “I talk to Joe. I communicate with him all the time. I’ll just say this: My support of a manager is that they’re managing, right? If I didn’t support them, they wouldn’t be managing.”

So, it didn’t work out again for the Phillies in the late innings Tuesday night. But it so rarely has since 2019.

It’s a nightly play — call it The Bullpen Follies, though it’s a comedy for only the non-Phillies fan — and it’s as responsible as anything for prolonging the NL’s longest active postseason drought and keeping Harper, squarely in his prime, from doing his thing in the playoffs.

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“I mean, we can’t keep doing it,” Harper said. “We’ve got to win games. Baseball happens, and you win, you lose. It’s part of the game. But a game like that, we’ve got to win a game like that.”

Remember that line. Clip and save. Harper probably will need to cue it up again soon.