Phillies clinch a playoff berth for the third season in a row with blowout of Mets

Alec Bohm went deep in the fourth to highlight a six-run fourth. Now, the Phillies are one win away from their first NL East title since 2011.

Phillies third baseman Alec Bohm hit a three-run homer to key a six-run fourth inning.Read moreMonica Herndon / Staff Photographer

by Scott Lauber

Published Sept. 20, 2024, 10:29 p.m. ET

NEW YORK — For months, it felt inevitable.

The fastest start in franchise history will do that. The Phillies won 37 of 51 games, and 45 of 64, their postseason odds rocketing to 90%, then 95%, never dipping. Heck, they could have printed playoff tickets by Memorial Day and appeared only slightly overconfident.

But baseball grinds down even the good teams. The Phillies endured a summer swoon that never threatened to shove them out of first place but did bruise their invincibility. And they dropped three of four games this week, which kept the bubbly on ice longer than expected.

So after Alec Bohm launched a three-run homer into the New York night in the fourth inning Friday to power a 12-2 rout of the Mets that finally turned inevitable into reality, it only felt appropriate for manager Rob Thomson to raise a champagne toast to locking up a playoff spot for the third season in a row.

Red October, welcome back to Philadelphia.

“It’s difficult to get to this point,” said Thomson, wearing a blue, MLB-issued “October Ready” T-shirt. “There’s a lot of really good teams out there. You’ve got to overcome obstacles. The goal now is firmly entrenched that it’s to win a World Series, and that’s it. And that’s good to feel. It really is.”

One more victory this weekend over the second-place Mets and the Phillies will clinch their first National League East title since 2011. That’s when the real party, with the beer goggles and the spraying of suds in all corners of the clubhouse, will start.

“It’ll be a little more rowdy,” Bohm said. “For sure.”

But there isn’t a soul in baseball who takes the postseason for granted, even in an era when 12 of the 30 teams get in. The Phillies recently went 10 seasons without making it. They now have the fourth-longest active streak of playoff appearances, trailing the Dodgers, Astros, and Braves. And Atlanta’s six-year run is in danger of ending.

And as Thomson told the players during his toast, it’s only the third time in the Phillies’ 142-season history that they’ve made the playoffs three years in a row. They had five consecutive appearances from 2007 to 2011 and three straight from 1976 to 1978.

So, yes, it’s an achievement to be cherished.

“It’s a huge accomplishment,” Bryce Harper said. “I think any time you’re able to get into the postseason, no matter what the clinch is like, it’s huge. This game is hard. I think our team has done a great job all season. We’ve got bigger goals, but this is a great moment.”

You might not have known it from the final out. The Phillies punched their ticket when reliever Jeff Hoffman got Mets rookie Luisangel Acuña to bounce out to shortstop. Hoffman clapped hands with catcher J.T. Realmuto, and the Phillies calmly went through the typical handshake line for the 92nd time in 154 games.

But wait, why was the Phillies’ highest-leverage reliever working in a 10-run game?

“Why wouldn’t you want to be that guy?” Hoffman said of getting the clinching out. “It’s been a whole season worth of hard work to culminate into one moment. It was good.”

It was also a moment to imagine how much better it could still get.

Imagine, for instance, if Bohm reverts to being the RBI machine from the season’s first half. He recently missed 14 games with a strained left hand and went 2-for-15 in his first four games back.

But there he was, in his familiar cleanup spot, going deep on a sweeper from righty reliever Adam Ottavino after the Mets intentionally walked Harper with first base open to break the game apart like a piñata in the big fourth inning.

Two weeks ago, Bohm said swinging a bat felt like someone was taking a hammer to his hand.

And now?

“Good,” he said.

But maybe Bohm’s hand bothered him for longer than he let on. Going into Friday night, he was batting .264 and slugging .403 with 11 doubles and a .718 OPS since the All-Star break. Before the break, he batted .295 and slugged .482 with 33 doubles and an .830 OPS.

Imagine what a productive Bohm would mean to the offense.

“He wants to be great from the jump, and we expect that out of him,” Harper said. “I think he needs to give himself a little bit of grace, too, though. He’s coming back from a tough injury with his hand. As a player, we know what he’s going to do. We know what he can do in the postseason, as well. He’ll show up when the lights turn on.”

Said Bohm: “Just got to keep putting the bat on the ball, cut the chases down, do what I can, swing at good pitches, and make them throw the ball over the plate. The more I put the ball in play in those situations, there’s a chance for good things to happen.”

The stars will carry the Phillies in the postseason. But they could play the matchups for unexpected contributions, too. In what might’ve been a preview of his postseason strategy, Thomson stacked the lineup with right-handed hitters against Mets lefty David Peterson. Edmundo Sosa started at second base over Bryson Stott; Weston Wilson started in left field over Brandon Marsh.

And Sosa started the big fourth inning with a one-out single before Wilson doubled to left field. Johan Rojas, who notched a playoff-clinching walk-off single last September, drove them in with a double down the left-field line to open a 4-2 lead.

Then, there was Cristopher Sánchez, who sidestepped a season-high five walks and overcame a two-run first inning to get through five. His early struggle continued a mystifying trend in which he has posted a 2.05 ERA at home compared to a 5.02 mark on the road.

The Phillies have looked into it without reaching any conclusions. At first, Thomson wondered if Sánchez faced better teams on the road. That hasn’t been the case.

“He was better on the road last year,” Thomson said. “I don’t know whether it’s a year-to-year thing, case-by-case. I don’t know what it is. There’s something to it, for sure.”

Regardless, it’s something the Phillies will take into consideration as they configure their rotation for the postseason.

Oh, and Thomson, superstitious as anyone, can start talking about the postseason now, even though the Phillies have been planning for it for months.

Red October is less than two weeks away.