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  • Instant observations: Bryce Harper, Nick Castellanos and Bryson Stott even NLDS, save Phillies season

    Instant observations: Bryce Harper, Nick Castellanos and Bryson Stott even NLDS, save Phillies season

    The Phillies just needed to break the seal.

    And they did in a big way Sunday, as a pair of monster home runs and a late triple evened the NLDS at 1-1 in a come-from-behind 7-6 walk-off Phillies victory.

    After blowing a two-run ninth-inning lead, the Phillies drew two walks and Nick Castellanos called game.

    Castellanos was mobbed in the infield as a party erupted in Citizens Bank Park. It was his third game-altering hit of a roller coaster ride in South Philly, one that will long be remembered as the Phillies are back in business following a lifeless Game 1 loss.

    The Mets were the feel-good story in baseball (or at least one of them this October), and they finally ran into a (red) brick wall in the form of the Phillies’ awakened offense. Things head up I-95 to Queens with the best-of-five series all squared up. Here’s a look at the good, the bad and the ugly from a storybook Game 2 win:

    The Good

    • Bryce Harper’s baseball bat carries the weight of an entire city on it. And in the sixth inning, he uncorked an aura of bliss and relief with one swing:

    The offense was in total muck and mire, but hitting can be contagious — and Nick Castellanos caught what Harper had seconds later:

    New life for a game, a series, and a season after two long balls, as the Phillies and Mets were suddenly tied at 3-apiece. The momentum had discernibly shifted.

    There’s something unique about baseball that makes it rightly worthy of the romanticism the sport gets from its hardcore and longtime fans. Other sports like basketball or football surely have momentum changes or hugely impactful plays. But they’re often anticipated, or extremely situational. Baseball can turn at the drop of a hat and it did on Sunday in South Philly.

    • While on the subject of Castellanos — the Phils got another huge hit from the streaky outfielder, when a single in the eighth allowed Harper (after a walk) to go from first to third. That’s when the birthday boy Bryson Stott hit a two-RBI triple to put the Phillies ahead for the first time in 16 innings:

    These are the kinds of big-time plays the Phillies have made routinely over the previous two falls. Insurance came on a weakly hit J.T. Realmuto grounder that Mark Vientos was unable to come up with, scoring Stott and giving Philly a 6-4 edge.

    • It was a tough call for manager Rob Thomson to push typical Game 2 starter Aaron Nola back for regular-season phenom Cristopher Sánchez, whose home-away splits made a compelling case for him to start at Citizens Bank Park– the lefty’s 2.21 ERA and 7-3 record through 17 starts in South Philly this year stood as the third-best home season for a starter in the history of the ballpark.

    Three innings in, with Sánchez looking like he was in cruise control, a single from Francisco Lindor and a two-run blast from the red-hot Vientos put him on the ropes quickly, and the Phillies yet again in an uncomfortable spot. 

    Ultimately it turned out okay, as Phillies’ All-Star had five solid innings and was interestingly lifted after 88 pitches. He received zero run support. It’s really hard to make much of Thomson’s choice, as he’d sign up for two runs allowed every day of the week.

    Sánchez did not make his career postseason debut in his start Sunday — he actually has one under his belt from last season. The hurler tossed two and a third innings against the Diamondbacks in Phoenix last October, in what was essentially an opener role. He allowed two runs in an eventual 6-4 loss in the NLCS (that would tie that series at two games each).

    • Nice to get the taste of three straight home playoff losses out of the Delaware Valley (dating back to Game 6 and 7 of the NLCS last year).

    The Bad

    • We’ll save the lamentations about MLB’s postseason format, and how the Phillies’ second-best record in the majors over 162 games was almost eradicated with the “reward” of having five days off last week. But clearly the rust had some weight. The Phillies had just three hits before Harper’s homer, and the bullpen, well…

    • After five pretty good innings, Thomson lifted Sánchez for José Ruiz, who gave up three hits but most damagingly a home run to Pete Alonso to put the Phils further behind 3-0.

    Later, after the Phillies tied it, Brandon Nimmo took another ace reliever Orion Kirkering deep, again putting the Mets up 4-3. Make that eight runs allowed by Phillies relievers so far in this series. Is it on the manager, or do the players need to perform?

    The Phillies had a very striated bullpen this season, with four reliable killer relievers — Strahm, Kerkering, Jeff Hoffman and Carlos Estévez. Three of those four couldn’t hang on to shut down the Mets and if the Phillies want to claw out a series win, they can’t do it without clean innings from those four arms. Strahm was the worst offender, following up his ugly Game 1 with a two-run game-tying homer to Vientos in Game 2.

    • Trea Turner had a pair of stolen bases in the first inning, and Johan Rojas had one in the third — the ultra-aggressive base running was a sign of just how much the Phillies were pressing, with base runners few and far between up to that point this postseason. Stott was the Phillies’ third base runner of the game in the fourth and he was caught trying to nab third. 

    • Alec Bohm was on the bench to start Game 2 after an 0-for-4 Game 1. He was called on to pinch hit, and popped out on one pitch. Edmundo Sosa made an error replacing him at third. What will Thomson do at third on Tuesday?

    The Ugly

    • The bullpen aces giving up clutch hits and home runs to the Mets will be the story of this series if the Phillies falter in it. 

    Take a look:

    Pitcher Reg. Season Games 1-2
    Matt Strahm 1.87 ERA in 62.2 IP 4 ER in 1 IP
    Carlos Estévez 2.57 ERA in 21 IP 0 ER in 1 IP
    Orion Kerkering 2.29 ERA in 63 IP 1 ER in 1.2 IP
    Jeff Hoffman 2.17 ERA in 66.1 IP 5 ER in 0.1 IP

    • They really should name it a “Philly Cheer” when fans sarcastically applaud and cheer for a player, like when Castellanos swung and missed at two atrocious pitches in a row during his fourth-inning at-bat before taking a pitch in the dirt.

    The boo birds were in full swing for a lot of Sunday’s game, replacing the amped-up, high-decibel roars that defined the previous two playoff runs through South Philadelphia. The Phils’ flat offense and desperate approach at the plate was not pleasing to the 46,000 faithful fans in the stands. They let players know when they’re playing well… and when they’re not.

    • During Kyle Schwarber’s third-inning fly out to right — on a line drive that was very close to being a game-tying home run Rojas got some exercise. After a single, the speedy centerfielder threw caution to the wind as he rounded second base on the Schwarber fly out, put on the breaks and retreated to first after the out was recorded, and then did it again as a throwing error allowed him to take second base. He would later steal third. 

    MORE: Bryce Harper on the Phillies’ postseason mentality

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    Evan Macy

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  • NLDS: Phillies’ bullpen melts down in Game 1 loss to Mets, wasting brilliant Zack Wheeler start

    NLDS: Phillies’ bullpen melts down in Game 1 loss to Mets, wasting brilliant Zack Wheeler start

    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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    Nick Tricome

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