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Jet lag? Overconfidence? Whatever the excuse, the Phillies whiffed their way out of Game 3.

The Phillies committed a number of baseball sins on Thursday night. Somehow, they almost came away with the win anyway. Now all that's left to do is go to bed and forget that Game 3 ever happened.

Alec Bohm strikes out looking to end the top of the ninth inning in Game 3 of the NLCS against the Diamondbacks on Thursday in Phoenix. The Phillies went on to lose, 2-1.
Alec Bohm strikes out looking to end the top of the ninth inning in Game 3 of the NLCS against the Diamondbacks on Thursday in Phoenix. The Phillies went on to lose, 2-1.Read moreYong Kim / Staff Photographer
    by David Murphy | Columnist
    Published 

PHOENIX — The following is a list of things that a team cannot do and expect to win a postseason game.

  1. Swing and miss 20 times, including 17 against a rookie starting pitcher.

  2. Allow three straight opposing batters to reach base immediately after scoring your only run of the game.

  3. Rack up more than four times as many strikeouts as hits.

  4. Allow 13 baserunners while producing just six of your own.

  5. Walk the leadoff batter in the bottom of the ninth inning of a tie game.

You can do some of those things. Maybe even most of them. Heck, the Phillies did all of them and still had a realistic chance at going to extra innings with one out in the ninth. But there are only so many times you can flirt with defeat before she slaps you in the face. If Ketel Marte hadn’t done it, somebody else would have.

» READ MORE: Phillies’ Cristopher Sanchez says ‘I’ll be ready’ to start Game 4

The Phillies did not deserve to win Game 3 of the National League Championship Series. They didn’t deserve to take a 3-0 series lead. Yes, they were in a position to do so. Yes, you can find all sorts of ways to frame their 2-1 walk-off loss as the one that got away. But just because a team could have won doesn’t mean it should have. The Phillies most definitely didn’t.

“I thought we had a chance, but that’s baseball,” said Ranger Suárez, one of the few Phillies who didn’t appear to be suffering from a massive case of jet lag in Game 3. “Sometimes you are able to pull out a win like that. Sometimes, you’re not. Disappointed, but you just have to turn the page and focus on [Friday].”

The story of this one wasn’t Orion Kerkering or Craig Kimbrel. It was a lineup that looked lost against a 25-year-old rookie. The Phillies swung and missed at 17 of the 70 pitches that Brandon Pfaadt threw. They reached base just twice with nine strikeouts before he departed after 5⅔ scoreless innings. They are a team that is built to score runs in bunches, not eke the occasional one out on a wild pitch.

The Phillies did hold a lead, and the bullpen did blow it. Kerkering allowed three hits to the three batters he faced in the seventh after Bryce Harper scored from third on that aforementioned wild pitch by Diamondbacks righty Ryan Thompson. Kimbrel started off the ninth with a walk and a single before giving up Marte’s one-out walk-off single. So, yeah, not good.

But even before that inning, defeat felt inevitable. The better team was in the other dugout. It’s the first time that’s happened this postseason. The Phillies’ only other loss in eight playoff games was one that they mostly dominated. The Braves stole one from them in Game 2 of the division series. That wasn’t the case with the Diamondbacks on Thursday.

You kept waiting for that big hit, that momentum-turning play, for that pivotal moment that the Phillies have produced habitually throughout the last two postseasons. It never came.

Credit Pfaadt, who posted a 5.72 ERA during the regular season but held the Dodgers scoreless for 4⅓ innings his last time on the mound. The Diamondbacks looked ready for the offseason after losing Games 1 and 2 by combined score of 15-3. Pfaadt changed all that, aided by a Phillies lineup that couldn’t help themselves from chasing pitches out of the zone (per Statcast, they swung at more pitches off the plate than over it).

» READ MORE: Bryson Stott’s prediction for Bryce Harper’s free-agency decision was way off. Now he says it was a ‘no-brainer.’

There weren’t many highlights. Harper scored the Phillies’ only run on a mad dash from third base after a seventh-inning wild pitch that got to the backstop. José Alvarado recorded three outs on two pitches in the bottom half of that frame, rescuing the Phillies from what appeared to be the inning that would end it all. That was more or less it.

“That’s the first time a lot of us have seen him,” said Harper, who went 0-for-2 against Pfaadt. “It’s always tough. I thought he threw the ball well. I don’t want to say too much because we could see him again. But I thought he threw the ball well.”

Were they tired? Overeager? Overconfident? Burnt out?

Any or all of those things would make some sense. The Phillies were coming off a 48-hour adrenaline rush followed by a cross-country flight that touched down barely 24 hours before the first pitch of Game 3. With a 2-0 series lead and the potential for two more home games, they were playing with more margin for error than they’ve enjoyed in any of the last two postseasons.

“Not lack of focus, I can tell you that,” said Phillies manager Rob Thomson, giving credit instead to the Diamondbacks’ pitching. “These guys were locked in today coming into the ballpark, and all the work was really good. I think Pfaadt pitched very well. And we saw a couple of guys we haven’t seen so far in the playoffs with [Kevin] Ginkel and [Paul] Sewald and Thompson. Just have to dust yourself off and come back [Friday], and that’s what this team does.”

» READ MORE: Rob Thomson blew it for the Phillies when he brought in rookie Orion Kerkering | Marcus Hayes

You can only hope that’s all it was. Shake the rust off, get slapped back to reality, and check back into the zone they inhabited for the first eight games of these playoffs.

Get some sleep. Forget Game 3 ever happened. They would be the two best things the Phillies did all day.

    David Murphy
    I write opinion and analysis pieces, with a heavy emphasis on the four professional sports teams.
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