Three Phillies conquered a game of failure, saved their season, and summoned the spirit of 2022
Game 2 mostly was a story. First, of failure. Then, of overcoming it. Whether the story endures is a question that will be decided on Thursday in a decisive Game 3.
ATLANTA — While it may be overly reductive to call baseball the most individual of the team sports, it sure can be the most isolating. That’s true with regard to the physical proximity between teammates on the field of play, and also to the psycho-emotional weight a player must bear when things go awry. In baseball, it is almost always clear where the blame lies.
There was a time in Alec Bohm’s career when he carried more of this baggage than could fit in the overhead bin. Andrew Painter accumulated enough of it in such a short period of time that the Phillies shipped him to the minors without a return ticket. Bryce Harper? He beat a different path to Truist Field and this best-of-three wild-card series. But there he was on Wednesday afternoon, in the seventh inning of a game the Phillies needed to win, making the lonely walk back from the warning track with the slow, confused strides of a man whose misplayed fly ball had just allowed the go-ahead run to score.
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“Obviously,” Harper would say later, “a world of emotion there.”
The Phillies’ 4-3 victory in 10 innings over the Braves in Game 2 on Wednesday was a lot of different things.
It was playoff baseball at its finest, not to mention its most hazardous to a fan’s cardiac health.
It was a showcase: of the razor-thin margins that will determine which of these two teams advances, and of the strengths that once again have the Phillies on the verge of an NLDS berth.
David Murphy alerts
Mostly, though, Game 2 was a story. First, of failure. Then, of overcoming it.
Whether the story endures is a question that will be decided on Thursday in a decisive Game 3. The winner will move on to face the Dodgers in a best-of-five series. The loser will move on to face the haunting what-ifs of an early offseason.
“I expect them to come out [Thursday] and it to be a similar game,” Braves manager Walt Weiss said. “Like I said [Tuesday], this is usually what it looks like when these two teams play. So yeah, that’s what’ll happen [Thursday]. We’ll come out and we’ll be ready.”
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But if momentum is real, and if adversity is a buoy, the Phillies have to like their chances, whatever the odds say.
“It’s in our DNA,” Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber said. “We’re not going to quit.”
It was Schwarber who set the redemption arc in motion in the eighth. The Phillies were reeling from what had been a disaster of a seventh inning in the field. After leadoff hitter Sean Murphy drew a walk against a tiring Cristopher Sánchez, Bohm unwisely threw to second on a sacrifice bunt attempt by Ha-Seong Kim instead of taking the out at first.
Then, two batters later, Harper misjudged a line drive off the bat of Drake Baldwin and could not secure the catch. The play plated Murphy with the go-ahead run and set up a sacrifice fly by Matt Olson that gave the Braves a 3-1 lead. The lead was brief.
Schwarber took care of the first run, belting a 3-2 pitch from Braves lefty Dylan Lee into the right-center field seats to cut the deficit to one run. That set the stage for Harper, who atoned for his fielding miscue by hitting a 1-1 slider from Lee over the wall in right-center. Bohm, too, would get his chance. First, he needed Painter to take advantage of his own.
Entering the series, interim manager Don Mattingly was murky about his plans for Painter, the one-time top prospect whose first stint in the majors lasted just 14 starts, 11 of them Phillies losses. The rookie had rebounded nicely from his midseason demotion, rediscovering his fastball and his confidence while posting a 3.65 ERA and averaging more than a strikeout per inning in 11 starts down the stretch. But Mattingly entered the postseason planning on using Painter out of the bullpen, something the righty had never previously done. When Schwarber and Harper tied the game at 3 in the top of the eighth, the kid’s time had come.
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Six pitches into Painter’s outing, there was a runner on first and he had not thrown a strike. Things changed drastically after a meeting on the mound and a brief pep talk from catcher J.T. Realmuto. Michael Harris II took a called strike and then hit Painter’s 2-1 pitch directly to Bohm, who started and finished a 3-6-3 double play. Murphy then popped up the first pitch to Bohm to end the inning. From six pitches, no strikes, to three pitches, three outs.
After a scoreless ninth from Painter, Bohm gave him the only run he’d need to close out the game. With two out in the top of the 10th, the Phillies corner infielder and soon-to-be-free agent took a ball and then a strike and then drilled a 99 mph fastball from Didier Fuentes over the right-field wall.
“Everybody is fighting for every out, every at-bat,” Mattingly said. “It’s not going to stop.”
This was one of those wins that meant more than the final score, more even than a season prolonged for another day. It was a revelation. The Phillies entered this postseason riding a string of three straight playoffs series defined by failure. Nick Castellanos being thrown out on a sacrifice bunt. Orion Kerkering short-circuiting. The no-show against the Mets. Two straight home losses needing a win to reach the World Series. Once upon a time, this Phillies team had a mojo that forced you to believe, regardless of circumstance, that they would overcome.
In Game 2, they overcame, three individual triumphs stitched together into a collective in that peculiar baseball way. The old saw that says baseball is a game of failure is not entirely correct. It is a game of bouncing back from failure. More often than not, the last team standing is the team that bounces back the best.
