Phillies’ $800 million Big Four — Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber, Nick Castellanos, Trea Turner — vanish again in Game 3 loss

The Phillies have lost four of their last five playoff games. The first two losses eliminated the Phillies in a seven-game NLCS last season. The last two losses brought them to the brink of elimination in the NL Division Series. Toothless on Tuesday night, the Phillies lost Game 3 to the Mets, 7-2.

In the Phillies’ last four playoff losses, through the first seven innings of Game 3 on Tuesday, the Big Four, under contract for almost $800 million, were 6-for-56 and the Phillies had scored five total runs. Namely: Kyle Schwarber, Trea Turner, Bryce Harper, and Nick Castellanos, in Tuesday’s batting order of futility. By the time the Big Four got going Tuesday, the game was over. The Phils trailed, 6-0, with six outs to go.

That’s the story.

“Obviously, we had some situations — me, personally, as well — where we didn’t come through,” said Harper, who so often comes through.

“Just got to go get ‘em tomorrow.”

After tomorrow, there will be no tomorrow. Not if the money men don’t cash out.

Game 4 starter Ranger Suárez has battled a bad back for most of the season. He hasn’t lasted even six innings in almost three months. He’s 1-3 in his last four starts, with a 7.79 ERA. He won’t have pitched in 11 days, and he gave up six earned runs in two innings last time out.

He’ll need help. Early help. Will he get it?

Phillies starters in the first three games of this series haven’t had it. While they were in the game, they’ve had a total of one run of support.

One run.

“Got to go out there and plug some hits along, put some runs up there, and let Ranger do his job,” Harper said.

Which means they’ll have to do their jobs.

That’s how the Phillies were built. Owner John Middleton flew to Las Vegas to nail down the Harper deal during spring training in 2019, then committed $115 million to J.T. Realmuto, $79 million to Kyle Schwarber, $100 million to Nick Castellanos, and $300 million to Trea Turner.

“It’s gonna be on us,” Schwarber said.

As it should be. As it was last year.

They are the story.

Not the bullpen meltdowns. Not then-rookie Orion Kerkering and AARP closer Craig Kimbrel last year, and not Matt Strahm, Jeff Hoffman & Co. this year.

Not the starters. Zack Wheeler was amazing in the Game 1 NLDS loss, though Aaron Nola wasn’t great Tuesday, and he wasn’t great in Game 6 of the NLCS last year, and Suárez wasn’t great in Game 7, either.

But the offense has scored a total of seven runs in those losses.

With Realmuto, the aggregate contract number rises to more than $900 million.

Nine hundred million. Seven measly runs.

It turns out that Sunday’s Game 2 seven-run spike was the exception to the current rule: Since the middle of the 2023 NLCS, the well-heeled Phillies aren’t producing to their pay grade. Not in the biggest moments.

Nola’s well-paid, too. Last winter he signed a seven-year, $172 million contract to stay with the Phillies.

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They’d hoped he would post his 30 starts again. Which he did (33). They’d hoped he would be dominant again in the early part of the postseason. He didn’t surrender a run in the first start of either of his previous playoff runs. That, he didn’t do.

He wasn’t as bad as his numbers Tuesday. Entering the sixth inning he had struck out eight, walked none, and the only runs were solo homers from Pete Alonso in the second and Jesse Winker in the fourth. The homer was Alonso’s sixth off Nola, but then, Alonso has owned him: He was 16-for-50 (.320). Hey, Polar Bears got to eat, too.

Nola tired in the sixth: single, walk, walk, bench. Kerkering almost rescued Nola, and might have if second baseman Edmundo Sosa hadn’t botched a possible double play ball, but Sosa booted a one-hopper and got just one out at the plate. A fly ball made it two outs instead of three, and a two-run single by Starling Marte ruined Nola’s line: five innings, four runs, all earned, two homers, two walks.

It happens. He’s a 31-year-old who’s averaged about 200 innings in the regular season over the last three years then pitched deep into two wild-card playoff runs.

You know what can’t happen?

Seven runs in four playoff games from a lineup with $800 million in the 1-2-3-4 slots.

The best of them have cost them, especially Tuesday.

Harper is the best of them.

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With runners on first and second in the third, with two out, Harper weakly grounded out to starter Sean Manaea.

With runners on first and second in the sixth, with no outs, Harper fanned at three straight offspeed pitches.

It was not The Showman who’d been so locked in Games 1 and 2.

It was … feeble.

It also was unforeseeable.

Entering the game Harper was 4-for-11 against Manaea. He was 3-for-8 with a home run this season.

Harper finally managed an RBI single in the eighth off Phil Maton, saving a shutout and, to a degree, saving face after 2½ hours of feebleness. Castellanos followed Harper’s RBI single in the eighth with another. Too little, too late.

Manaea was good, but face it: He’s Sean Manaea. You can talk all you want about his new arm angle and his sneaky sweeper, but the Phillies tagged him for three runs on Sept. 21, and the Brewers rocked him for six less than a week later, then scored two on him in Game 2 of the wild-card series last week, which the Mets lost.

Manaea lasted seven innings, allowed three hits, and one run, which scored after he was lifted in the eighth.

Harper wasn’t alone in his untimely failures Tuesday. Schwarber is 0-for-9 since his second hit in Game 1. Turner had first and second with one out in the eighth and grounded out. Castellanos stranded the same two runners in the sixth as Harper did. It was worse, but not of Casty’s doing: Schwarber, running on contact, got doubled off second base.

“We took some really good swings,” said Castellanos, whose walk-off heroics in Game 2 averted a sweep of the No. 2-seed Phillies by the No. 6-seed Mets. “We didn’t find many holes.”

Four out of five games is a long time to not find many holes.