Game 1 played out in the scenario many fans were fearful of.
Zack Wheeler was excellent, Kyle Schwarber made an immediate statement with an emphatic lead-off homer, but then the Phillies’ bats went silent the rest of the way, sitting on a narrow lead that the momentum-riding Mets have proven they can flip in an instant.
And the second the Phils reached into the bullpen late, it happened.
The Mets put together an eighth-inning rally to win 6-2 on Saturday at what 45,000-plus wanted to be an electric Citizens Bank Park – to kick off a Phillies postseason run hanging on World Series-or-bust ambitions.
Instead, New York’s still riding their late-year high, while the Phillies are now working from behind 1-0 in the best-of-five National League Division Series.
“You can’t harp on this one,” Bryce Harper said from the Phillies’ clubhouse postgame. “You gotta understand, you gotta flush it, and come back tomorrow.”
Game 2 is Sunday. Lefty Cristopher Sánchez has the nod for it to try and even out the series. But until then, here’s how Saturday fell apart…
Played with fire
The Mets showed it not even a full two days ago: You give them even the narrowest of openings and they’ll flip a game completely on its head.
They stole the Wild Card series with a ninth-inning rally in Game 3 against the Brewers on Thursday, and the Phillies came in knowing how dangerous they were because of it.
On Saturday, Zack Wheeler more than did his part, throwing a dominant and clutch seven-scoreless innings in a 1-0 game.
Then the ball was given to Jeff Hoffman in the eighth. He gave up a single to Francisco Alvarez and walked Francisco Lindor with no one out.
The crack was right there. The Mets blew it open.
In a 1-2 count, with Hoffman and the Phillies desperately needing an out, Mark Vientos roped a pitch into left, which was more than enough for pinch-runner Harrison Bader to score from second and for Lindor to get to third.
The game was tied, the Phillies were in trouble, and manager Rob Thomson had to take the ball from Hoffman to bring in Matt Strahm hoping he would hold things there.
He couldn’t.
Brandon Nimmo singled to drive in Lindor, and then Pete Alonso hit a sac fly to center to let Vientos tag up and score.
The Mets were up 3-1 and the Phillies had lost their grip on the game in an instant as the home crowd fell into a pit of dejection and frustrated boos.
Strahm and the Orion Kerkering gave up two more runs before it was over. The Mets went up 5-1, and the bullpen had completely melted down.
“They smelled blood in the water,” Strahm said postgame. “They got scrappy and we got got.”
Wheeler silenced the Mets’ lineup all day, but they survived him for long enough to get into the Phillies’ bullpen, with the benefit of the Philadelphia bats not doing much to give themselves a cushion outside of Kyle Schwarber’s lead-off bomb in the first.
This was the reason to be afraid of the Mets, the reason why Thomson said the day before that the second the Phillies get a chance offensively, they have to put the hammer down.
The Mets came in hot, are playing with nothing to lose, and aren’t ever truly dead.
The Phillies played with fire, and they got burned. Now they’re in a 1-0 hole.
Offensive power outage
Schwarber crushed the lead-off home run to make it 1-0 Phils out of the gate, but then that was it.
He hit a single in the third, but that was the only other Phillies hit up until Harper doubled and then Nick Castellanos singled in the eighth to put runners at the corners. The Phils couldn’t make something out of it though. Alec Bohm grounded into a force out to end the inning right after.
The Phillies only had five hits, a homer, and an RBI on their last licks to show for what was a bullpen game for the Mets.
New York’s decision to start Kodai Senga after an injury-riddled season and a several-month layoff was a bit of a shocker, but it was an opportunity for the Phillies to pounce early.
With Schwarber’s lead-off shot, it looked like they were going to, but then Senga settled in and used that notorious “ghost fork” to get through two innings.
Then the Phillies just had no answers for the Mets’ relievers.
“There was some chasing there tonight, for sure,” Thomson said postgame. “We gotta get back in the zone, we gotta start using the fields, it’s what I talk about all the time. Just put better at-bats together.”
This was one of the concerns from the Wild Card bye layoff and one of the lingering fears from how the postseason ended last year.
The bats are cold, and they just squandered what should have been a massive opportunity to start the postseason off right.
Now the Mets are in the driver’s seat.
“It’s the same thing, man. Chasing balls in the dirt, didn’t work deep into counts like we should’ve,” Harper said from the clubhouse after. “We gotta understand what they’re gonna try to do to us and flip the switch as an offense immediately.”
If they don’t, the immediate hole stands to get deeper real quick, and there might not be any coming back from that.
Blink and you’ll miss
It’ll get lost in the shuffle now because of how Saturday ended, but Wheeler was absolutely brilliant in his Game 1 start.
The Phillies took the field. The crowd roared as the spinning towels created a blinding sea of red.
Then Wheeler stunned the Mets in their place.
The ace right-hander retired the first three batters on 11 pitches, all strikes, and with only one of them put in play – Lindor’s line out to first leading off.
Vientos and Nimmo who followed in the 2 and 3 holes? They struck out swinging. They never stood a chance.
Against a New York club rolling in with all the momentum from the Wild Card round against Milwaukee, Wheeler stepped on the mound and brought the Mets to a screeching halt as the noise of 45,000-strong caved in from overtop of them.
It set the tone right away in favor of the Phils. It just didn’t hold.
“What can you say, man? He threw the crap out of it again,” Harper said of Wheeler’s effort. “Anytime he goes out there, he gives us a very good chance to win and I thought he just threw the ball great, really good to see.
“Obviously, I feel like as an offense we wasted that start.”
Bang.
And so did Schwarber catching a 1-1 pitch up in the zone with not a single person in the building having to think twice about it.
Leadoff homer to the second deck in right field. 1-0, Phils.
Two years ago, when the idea of the Phillies being back in the postseason was still only just a dream, Schwarber, as a pricey new free-agent signing, stepped up to the plate as the lead-off man against Oakland on Opening Day and golfed a pitch into the seats of a South Philly crowd that erupted.
No one knew it at the time, but that was the start of the chain reaction that led to everything this era of the Phillies would become.
Last October, in Game 1 of the NLCS, he didn’t wait on Zac Gallen and launched the first pitch he saw from the Arizona hurler into orbit. If you asked anyone right then and there, they would’ve said the Phillies were well on their way back to the World Series – up until they weren’t. In the short term though, the Phils won that game and were in good shape to start.
Schwarber is a highly unorthodox choice for a lead-off hitter. Always was, and always will be. But it works for the Phillies, and when he gets a hold of one with that lightning-quick swing, there’s no one else in baseball that can instantly dictate the outlook of a game from the jump quite like he can.
He tagged Senga right away on Saturday, and though the rest of the offense quieted down after to its own detriment, it got the Phillies’ postseason run instantly rolling – or so it looked.
Lead-off home runs from Schwarber are huge, but only if the Phillies build off them.
Under control (until it wasn’t)
Kept to a 1-0 game through seven innings, there were moments where the Mets could’ve capitalized – a Jesse Winker walk in the second, a Vientos single and another walk to Nimmo to put two on with no out in the fourth, a pitch that caught Starling Marte’s hand high and inside to put him on first with one out in the fifth, and then a walk to Lindor to start the sixth.
Wheeler was fazed by none of it.
Here’s how he responded to each situation, respectively:
• A four-pitch Marte groundout on a sinker to Bryson Stott at second to end the second.
• Clawing back from a 2-0 count against Pete Alonso to catch him on strikes looking, then forcing Jose Iglesias into another grounder to second that got flipped into an inning-ending double play to nail down the fourth.
• After hitting Marte, Wheeler punched out Tyrone Taylor and Francisco Alvarez back-to-back swinging to call the fifth – Taylor went down on fourth pitches and a splitter. Alvarez lasted for six, whiffing on a sweeper.
• A three-pitch strikeout swinging of Vientos, a two-pitch pop out from Nimmo to second, and then a huge K of Alonso on a splitter to get through six.
The Mets showed how dangerous they can be with the ninth-inning surge from Game 3 of the Wild Card round to close out the Brewers. If they have even a faint glimmer with the way they’re playing right now, they can and will hurt you.
So Wheeler needed to keep the New York lineup under control, even at the slightest hint of trouble.
He shut them down.
Wheeler’s line after six innings stood at just one hit, three walks, and nine strikeouts. His pitch count was at a manageable 89 pitches (55 of them strikes), and his stuff was so effective that he had the Mets swinging and missing 24 times by that point.
Wheeler came back out for the seventh, the lead was still 1-0, and the margin for error was growing thinner. He got Iglesias to pop out, but then he walked Winker. The Phillies got a reliever up in the bullpen. The ace kept his composure.
Marte popped out to short on four pitches chasing after a sweeper, then locked into a 3-2 payoff pitch, a 97-mph fastball jammed Taylor into a soft grounder up the middle that Trea Turner had the read on. Wheeler was in the clear after seven, and the fans were all on their feet for him waving the rally towels in unison as he walked back to the dugout.
No one was breathing easy, but Wheeler held it together with seven stellar, scoreless innings to give the Phillies the chance they needed.
The eighth and on was trusted to Hoffman and the bullpen. They couldn’t hold the line, the bats couldn’t come up with anything else, and it all went to waste.
“It stings,” Hoffman said. “You definitely want to capitalize on an outing like that. He did everything he could to keep us ahead in that game. Obviously, he did an unbelievable job. We’ll try to hold on to that one next time.”
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