The Phillies just lost a near-must-win Game 1. The bats better arrive fast in Game 2.
Runs are baseball’s currency, and the Phillies paid a lot of money to guys who are supposed to produce them. They better step up now or this will be Dead October.
They couldn’t lose this one. Not with Zack Wheeler on the mound. Not with the opposition running on empty. Not with a home crowd that was ready to combust.
The Phillies squandered all of these advantages on Saturday evening. They did it in a fashion that can deflate a team for good. Seven of the best-pitched innings a team could hope for, followed by one of the worst. A leadoff home run followed by 26 outs in 37 plate appearances. A 6-2 loss to the Mets after five days of rest and now the end of the season could be three days away. That was Game 1 of the National League Division Series for the Phillies.
Sometime in the eighth inning, an afternoon that began as a two-hour-long roar turned into a cascade of boos. The shift was sudden and total and entirely warranted. With the Phillies leading 1-0, four straight Mets reached base, a fifth hit a sacrifice fly, and then two more reached. By the time Orion Kerkering finally completed his relief of Jeff Hoffman and Matt Strahm, the Mets had seized a 5-1 lead in the game and a massive edge in the series.
Blame the manager, blame the rust, blame the format, blame whatever culprit you want. A baseball team has nine hitters, a starting pitcher, and a bullpen. It is difficult to win a game when only two of those players show up. It is devastating when it happens in Game 1 of a five-game series.
“Get up and fight,” Nick Castellanos said after the Phillies dropped their first Game 1 of the current playoff era. “That’s all we can do.”
Well, there is one other thing they can do. Hit the dang ball. The didn’t do it in Game 1. In fact, they haven’t done it in three straight postseason games dating back to last season. That’s a concern. Different year, sure, but same essential team. Same essential problem. Same essential results. Six hits in Game 6 of the 2023 NLCS. Five hits in Game 7. Five hits in Game 1 of the NLDS on Saturday: a leadoff home run by Kyle Schwarber followed by 4-for-31. Schwarber finished 2-for-5. Everyone else went 3-for-27.
It will be a shame if the last we saw of Zack Wheeler this season was him waving to the crowd and disappearing into the dugout after the top of the seventh inning. But that is the risk you take when you place the level of responsibility that the Phillies forced their ace to shoulder on Saturday. They entered the postseason believing that Wheeler and their revamped bullpen would be their trump cards. The latter turned out to be a complete disaster after their lineup left them with no margin for anything close to that.
“Obviously, as an offense, I feel like we wasted that start,” said Bryce Harper, who walked twice and struck out before hitting a two-out double in the bottom of the eighth. “Chasing balls in the dirt, didn’t work counts like we should have. We’ve got to understand what they are going to try to do to us and flip the switch as an offense.”
They better flip it fast.
Maybe it wasn’t a must-win. But it felt pretty darn close. Because of Wheeler, specifically. The Mets entered the series as one of those playoff participants so unserious that you have to take them seriously. They snuck into the playoffs, and snuck out of Milwaukee, and when a team does something like that you can almost see the psychological snowball beginning to roll.
Game 1 was the Phillies’ chance to smash it. They had the rarest of commodities, a starting pitcher with stuff and endurance that was stronger than any magic or mojo an opponent might carry with it. Everything else about these two squads was subject to the small-sample unpredictability that often favors a hot team like the Mets. In any given week, a lineup led by Francisco Lindor, Mark Vientos, and Pete Alonso could equal or best a lineup led by Bryce Harper, Trea Turner, and Kyle Schwarber. Same goes for the bullpen, where Edwin Diaz and Carlos Estévez are at least equals and their setup men close enough.
Wheeler in Game 1 was the Phillies’ best chance at eliminating chance from the equation. If they were going to win this one easily, Game 1 was going to be the difference.
Wheeler did his part. Schwarber, too. Everyone else missed the bus back from the intrasquad game. Wheeler opened the game with one of the most dominant first innings you will see from a pitcher: 11 consecutive strikes, most of them sitting at 98 mph, one of them touching 99, back-to-back strikeouts to end the scoreless frame. Schwarber followed it up with a second-deck Schwar-bomb that turned Citizens Bank Park into a shaking, shimmering, earsplitting sea of red and white and aluminum.
Just like last year. And the year before.
Wheeler kept it up. The hitters did not. The latter spent most of the next six innings hurrying back to the field in order to watch Wheeler pitch. Understandably. He dominated the Mets for seven scoreless innings, striking out nine, allowing five baserunners, walking off the mound with a 1-0 lead after 111 pitches.
It was Wheeler’s 12th consecutive start of six-plus innings and two runs or fewer. The last time he failed to do it was July 29, when he allowed seven runs in five innings of a 14-4 loss to the Yankees.
His numbers since then: 16 runs allowed, a 1.72 ERA, 94 strikeouts, and 16 walks in 78⅓ innings.
His nine strikeouts moved him into a tie with Cole Hamels for the Phillies’ all-time postseason lead with 77.
Now?
It is wasted. Irrelevant. The hope now is that it will not go down as a reminder of what the Phillies could have been this postseason. Forget about Rob Thomson’s decision to start Cristopher Sánchez in Game 2 on Sunday, with Aaron Nola set to pitch in Game 3 at Citi Field on Tuesday. Forget about the bullpen, even.
The Phillies’ hitters need to find their way, and they need to do it fast. The question is whether they need to be a team that they aren’t. The sun and the shadows wreaked havoc on hitters’ ability to see the ball, according to the hitters in the clubhouse afterward. The Mets and Phillies combined for three hits in their first seven innings. Game 2 will start at the same time as Game 1. The weather is forecast to be the same. There were no sun and shadows at Citizens Bank Park in last year’s NLCS.
“Just grind it out a little bit more,” said Trea Turner, who went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts. “I think they are doing a good job of making pitches, especially when they need to, and they are throwing quite a few different pitches. You can’t really rely on some of the at-bats you’ve had in the last couple months or so.”
Runs are baseball’s currency. The Phillies have paid a lot of cheddar to guys who are supposed to produce them. Those are the guys who now need to step up. Otherwise, Red October will be Dead October before it even gets started.