One loss from elimination, the answers are not nearly as easy as they seem for the Phillies

Rarely can the story of a baseball game be reduced to one pitch. Game 3 of the National League Division Series on Tuesday was not an exception. But there was one pitch that spoke volumes: not about the Phillies’ failures, or the Mets successes, but about the razor-thin margins that often separate the two.

That it was Bryce Harper on the losing side of the pitch in question only adds to the complexity of assigning blame for a loss that leaves the Phillies one game from elimination in a postseason that seemed theirs to win. When he stepped into the batter’s box with two out in the third inning, the Phillies’ first baseman did so with a career postseason OPS that trailed only Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth among players with at least 150 plate appearances. His 17 career postseason home runs were tied for 14th all-time. If you were to pick a player you’d want at the plate when a pitcher leaves an 0-1 sweeper up in the zone with two men on base, Harper would be on a very short list of ideal options. It just so happens that, in this particular instance, Harper missed it.

“Just miss or not miss, just didn’t get the job done,” the Phillies’ superstar said.

» READ MORE: Mets push Phillies to the brink of elimination with 7-2 victory in Game 3 of the NLDS

In the wake of a 7-2 loss to the Mets, Harper will be remembered mostly for how that third-inning at-bat ended, as well as the at-bats that preceded and followed. After fouling off that hittable 0-1 pitch, he grounded out on an 0-2 sweeper, ending the inning and providing Mets lefty Sean Manaea with a boost of momentum that wound up propelling him through seven magnificent innings.

The final tally from Harper’s night against Manaea: nine pitches, nine swings, three outs.

The conclusion seems obvious.

Yet, it isn’t.

See, seven of those nine pitches were in the strike zone. The only two exceptions came in 0-2 counts. Those 0-2 counts would have come to fruition had Harper taken any or all of the other seven. This was not a failure of process. It was a pitcher hitting his spots. Harper hit one of them on the screws directly at a fielder in the first inning. He failed to capitalize on a hittable pitch in the third inning. Manaea beat him with a hell of a three-pitch combo in the sixth.

The moral of the story is that, sometimes, there is no moral. There is nothing that anybody can write that will tell you more than you saw with your own two eyes on Tuesday night. The Phillies got beat, and they got beat the way every team can get beat in a nine-inning game. The Mets were the better team on Tuesday. They have been the better team all series. The tricky part isn’t diagnosing why that was the case. The tricky part is deciding what can be done to solve it.

“They are in the zone,” said Phillies designated hitter Kyle Schwarber. “They are in the strike zone. We’re going there and we’re looking for our pitch and when there’s strike one, OK, say you take the strike one, you foul one off, you’re 0-2 … I think that’s the biggest thing. We were in the zone.”

Schwarber’s tone was not combative or defiant. He was not attempting to excuse the Phillies’ performance or redirect blame. He was articulating the reality of baseball. The pitcher has the advantage when he is throwing the ball in the strike zone. The batter only has three opportunities to put the ball in play, two as the aggressor. You try to put a good swing on the ball and hope it goes where a fielder isn’t.

“That’s kind of the cool thing about our sport: We’re the only sport when on offense the ball isn’t in your hand,” Schwarber said. “When the ball hits your bat, that’s the only thing you can control, really — your swing until it hits the bat and after that it’s out of your control. You take hundreds of swings, you prepare, you do all these things to go into a game and possibly take 10 swings. It’s a crazy game. All those things we do to prepare are what we’re trying to do to make sure we feel sound and also too that a situation or a pitch isn’t going to fool us.”

The point here isn’t that the Phillies would be covering themselves in glory but for the whims of chance. At times, they have been the worst version of themselves: forcing the issue, leaving themselves in bad counts, chasing bad pitches, living and dying on the long ball. Should they lose this series, they will need to ask themselves whether they need to become less like themselves. Is there a way to strike some balance in this lineup, not only between the top and bottom of the order but in the skill sets that exist at all levels?

Rob Thomson tried to do it in Game 3, with the tools he had at his disposal. Righty Edmundo Sosa started at second base for Bryson Stott. Righty Austin Hays started in left field for Brandon Marsh. The results were little different than they have been at every point of this series save the last four innings of Game 2.

It’s certainly notable that the trend goes back to the last two games of last year’s National League Championship Series. For the fourth time in their last five postseason games, the Phillies failed to score more than two runs or generate more than six hits.

» READ MORE: These next two or three games of the NLDS could decide the future of the Phillies’ outfield

At the same time, this is the same team that did in 2022 as the Mets are doing this season, the same team that followed it up by getting to the verge of a second straight World Series in 2023. We’ve seen the Phillies overcome the odds enough times that it would be foolish to render any definitive judgments right now. The NLCS is still just back-to-back wins away. They have lost two of three games to an incredibly hot team, one of which would have been won with two shutdown bullpen innings.

Looking for answers is important. But it is a search that is not unique to the Phillies among postseason favorites. The mighty Dodgers were two losses away from their fourth straight first-round exit going into Tuesday’s late game. The Orioles and Braves are both riding streaks of two straight. The Phillies are the only team from last year’s League Championship Series still alive in the playoffs.

The Phillies need to be better. They need to be smarter. Mostly, they need to execute. The tricky thing about baseball is that it’s much easier said than done.