Game 1 hardly went the way the Phillies wanted it to.
They didn’t hit, their bullpen melted down, and an excellent Zack Wheeler start went to waste to put the Phils in a 1-0 hole against the rival and surging New York Mets in the best-of-five NLDS.
But they can’t dwell on it. There’s no time to. On to Game 2 on Sunday.
“That’s what you got to do. You can’t harp on this one,” said Bryce Harper after the Phillies’ 6-2 loss on Saturday. “You gotta understand, you gotta flush it, and come back tomorrow.”
It all happened fast, and put an early damper on a Red October Citizens Bank Park that was bracing to party its way through another lengthy postseason run.
Wheeler was stellar.
Against a Mets team riding a wave of momentum from an upset over the Milwaukee Brewers in the Wild Card round, all after they backed into the playoffs on the regular season’s final day, the ace righthander took the mound and froze them in their place with seven scoreless innings and just a single hit and four walks allowed. He struck out nine, and was throwing so effectively that he induced 30 New York swings and misses – the third-most in postseason history since MLB began tracking the stat in 2008, per MLB.com writer Sarah Langs.
But that was all to maintain a narrow and highly unstable 1-0 lead, in a matchup the Mets countered with a bullpen game started by Kodai Senga, who hadn’t pitched in months.
Kyle Schwarber tagged Senga for a lead-off home run that got the home crowd going right away, but then that was it. Schwarber came back around for a single in the third off Mets reliever David Peterson, but the Phillies’ offense was otherwise quiet.
No one aside from Schwarber had a hit until the eighth, and the lineup overall struggled to even make solid contact against Senga, Peterson, Reed Garrett, and then Phil Maton.
“It’s the same thing, man. Chasing balls in the dirt, didn’t work deep into counts like we should’ve,” Harper said. “We gotta understand what they’re gonna try to do to us and flip the switch as an offense immediately.”
But they didn’t on Saturday, which gave the Mets their chance. Wheeler had shut New York down, but they survived him long enough to get a look at the Phillies’ bullpen only down a run late.
It was trouble, and you only needed to go back a couple of days to the Mets’ ninth-inning rally in Game 3 of the Wild Card round to know it.
Manager Rob Thomson gave the ball to reliever Jeff Hoffman for the eighth, but he couldn’t get an out. A single, a walk, and then an RBI knock surrendered tied it, 1-1.
The Mets were doing it again.
“They smelled blood in the water,” said reliever Matt Strahm, who took over for Hoffman right after New York tied it. “They got scrappy and we got got.”
New York rallied for four more runs off Strahm and Orion Kerkering. The Phillies were stunned and weren’t in any shape to recover with the two frames they had left.
“It was stunning, it was, to see [Hoffman] and [Strahm] give it up like that,” Thomson said afterward. “That’s baseball sometimes. They haven’t done that since we’ve had them really.”
But it has them working from behind now, something the Phillies aren’t quite used to since they broke out into postseason contention in 2022 – at least not to start a series.
And it’s concerning. The cold bats that did them in against Arizona at the end of last year’s run came right back, and the bullpen’s failure to hold the line – granted, a thin one – has let the Mets continue to ride their late-season high, which the Phillies know better than maybe any other club how dangerous that can be.
But they can’t dwell on it. There’s no time. On to Game 2.
“I’m gonna treat tomorrow for what it is, which is one ball game,” Hoffman said. “I won’t be thinking about anything other than tomorrow. Won’t be thinking about today or yesterday or two days ago, it’s just another baseball game. We go out and we put our best foot forward and try to execute.”
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