Phillies’ bid to clinch the NL East spoiled by the Royals; Mets win to stay barely alive

The team plane idled in a nearby hangar, fueled up to whisk the Phillies across the country. But above each locker, rolls of plastic were set to be unfurled for champagne popping.

Which would it be: an on-time flight, or a boozy party?

Hold the celebration.

Needing only to win Sunday to defend the National League East crown, the Phillies lost — for the first time in a week — after Aaron Nola threw a dud in a 10-3 stomping by the Royals that ruined an undefeated homestand.

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But there was another path to clinching. If the free-falling Mets lost in New York — and they were riding an eight-game skid — the Phillies could still claim the division title. And as the Phillies walked off the field, the Mets and Rangers were tied in the ninth inning.

So, they waited. The Phillies. The plane. The booze. Even the fans, many of whom stuck around for nearly a half hour to watch the end of the Mets game on Phanavision in left field.

Until finally, at 4:42 p.m., the Mets pulled out a 5-2 victory on Pete Alonso’s homer.

Hold the celebration … again.

“We wish that we could’ve done it here, absolutely,” said Kyle Schwarber, who gave the Phillies a lead in the first inning with his 52nd homer. “But we’ve got a lot of baseball left. We’ve got to keep playing good and playing our style, and it’ll happen.”

Of course it will. The whole thing is a foregone conclusion. Not only will the Phillies repeat as NL East champs for the first time since their five consecutive crowns from 2007 to 2011, but they’ll win the division by the largest margin since at least 2011, when they had a 13-game spread.

Instead of partying at home, they will just do it on the West Coast, maybe as soon as Monday night at Dodger Stadium.

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(The Phillies did clinch a playoff berth Sunday, after the Giants lost to the Dodgers.)

A question that’s far more pressing than when and where the Phillies will pop champagne involves Nola, who gave up two runs in the fifth inning and four in the sixth after being staked to a 2-0 lead on first-inning homers by Schwarber and J.T. Realmuto.

After spinning six scoreless innings against the Mets earlier in the week, Nola cruised through four innings against the Royals. But he came unglued after that, allowing a two-run homer to Jac Caglianone in the fifth inning and Salvador Perez’s game-breaking three-run homer in the sixth.

Nola’s ERA through 15 starts: 6.44, the third-worst mark by a Phillies pitcher (minimum 80 innings) in a season since 1935. Only Taijuan Walker (7.10 last year) and Paul Byrd (6.54 in 2000) were worse.

“I feel like they jumped on me pretty quick right there in the sixth,” Nola said. “That leadoff triple off the wall right there [by Bobby Witt Jr.], I missed pretty bad on that pitch. I struggled that inning to get anybody out.”

Nola likely will have two more starts — next weekend in Arizona and the final week of the season against either the Marlins or Twins — to make a case to start a game in the best-of-five divisional round, assuming the Phillies hold off the Dodgers and secure a bye through the wild-card round.

It won’t be an easy decision. On one hand, Nola went 10 consecutive innings without allowing a run before the Royals got to him in the fifth; on the other, he has been prone to allowing one big inning all season.

And then, there’s Nola’s postseason track record, with a 3.70 ERA and five wins in the 2022 and 2023 playoffs.

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“Well, you’ve got to take into account his track record, no doubt about it,” manager Rob Thomson said. “But I do want to see him throw the ball consistently like he did in the first four or five innings [against the Royals].”

Let’s leave Nola for another day. On Sunday, there was only this: The odds of the Phillies even being in position to win the NL East this soon were infinitesimal.

Consider: When the week began, the magic number was only 13. It took nothing less, then, than six Phillies wins in a row and six consecutive Mets losses to set up a potential Sunday clinching. Even with the teams facing off in four of those games, it seemed, well, impossible.

The Phillies had their clinchmeister on the mound, too. Nola started the playoff clinchers in 2022 in Houston and 2023 at home. After coming up short in back-to-back attempts to win the NL East last season, he spun six solid innings at home to get the clinching party started.

Just not this time.

“I’ve been blessed to be in those situations and another one today,” Nola said. “But it’s baseball. I just try to go out and give the guys a good chance to win. I feel like I did that for the most part, until the sixth inning.”

So, now, it falls to Ranger Suárez against the Dodgers.

“You set the goal at the beginning of the year to win series and you want to win the division,” Schwarber said. “If we keep doing what we’re doing, good things are going to happen for us.”