The Phillies will give Orion Kerkering ‘the best support system’ to help him get past NLDS blunder

Less than 40 minutes after it happened, Phillies reliever Orion Kerkering stepped in front of dozens of cameras and microphones to address the most consequential mistake of his young baseball career.

“Just a horses— throw,” he said on Oct. 9 of his decision to throw home with two outs and the bases loaded, rather than make the routine play at first.

The wild throw will live on as the final moment of the Phillies’ 2025 season, allowing the Dodgers to walk them off in the 11th inning of Game 4 of the National League Division Series and advance to the NL Championship Series. And Kerkering, by far the youngest player on the Phillies’ postseason roster at 24 years old, will have to find a way to overcome it.

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Since the moment the ball left his hand, Kerkering wasn’t alone. Catcher J.T. Realmuto reached him first, where he stood slumped in front of the mound, before Nick Castellanos came running in from right field. Manager Rob Thomson met him as he approached the dugout steps, and Kerkering’s bullpen mates lent him their support in the clubhouse afterward.

And that support will continue over the offseason, president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said Thursday.

“I feel for Kerkering,” he said. “It was a tough situation. I know he was distraught. I talked to him a couple of times myself. I talked to him after the game and talked to him when we arrived again. He’s a strong individual. He will get whatever assistance, and we will offer him whatever assistance that he needs, and we’ll continue to work with him to try to get him through that.

“And I think he can do that, but I also know that’s a challenge for him. We’ll keep in contact with him on a continued basis, between people in the front office, people in administrative aspect of it, some of it in our coaching staff, I’m sure some of the players, to make sure that we can give him the best support system that we can.”

Thomson said he has spoken to Kerkering twice in the week since the season ended. They talked after the Phillies landed in Philadelphia and again the following day when he returned to the clubhouse to pack up.

“I think he’s in the right mindset right now,” Thomson said. “And I just reiterated that that happens to be the last play of the last game. And we’re out. So it’s magnified. But there’s so many things that happened prior to that. A bloop hit here, a great play they make on a bunt. All these different things, decisions that I make that didn’t work out.

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“All these other things are part of us losing. So everything’s focused on him right now. He’s going to have a long career, successful career. You just can’t dwell on that. People forget, and he needs to forget, too.”

In his second full season in the major leagues, Kerkering had an up-and-down year, with a 3.30 ERA in 60 innings. While his strikeout rate dipped to 24.4% and his walk rate increased to 10.2%, he remained above the 90th percentile in baseball in average exit velocity (85.9 mph) and hard-hit rate (33.5%).

Kerkering overcame some rough patches with the execution of his slider to end the regular season strong, gaining enough trust with the coaching staff to be given the ball in the 11th inning of Game 4. And Kerkering got the contact he was looking for from the Dodgers’ Andy Pages, but then failed to execute the defensive play.

Directly afterward, reliever Matt Strahm told The Athletic that he put some blame on himself for the error, suggesting that Kerkering hadn’t been prepared through enough pitchers’ fielding practice.

“The one thing I can think is, if you don’t routinely practice it, how do you expect to make it happen every time?” Strahm said. “And as an older guy in the bullpen, I guess I should have taken it upon myself to make sure we’re doing our [pitchers’ fielding practice].”

Dombrowski and Thomson pushed back on that characterization during their news conferences on Thursday. Kerkering participated in the Phillies’ PFP session during their bye week workout that was open to the media.

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“We did plenty,” Dombrowski said. “And, actually, as it turns out, we did do PFPs in the postseason. [Strahm] didn’t do them, but we did.”

Said Thomson: “We did do PFP during the break prior to the series, and it was a long PFP. But, again, me or nobody else can simulate that situation. Bobble, bases loaded, 55,000 people, tie game, extra innings. We could hit him that ball 1,000 times, and he’ll make the play, but I can’t simulate all the other things. So you just keep working, try to get better. But we did do PFP.”

Now, Thomson is confident that not only will Kerkering find a way to overcome the mistake, he will be better equipped in similar situations in the future.

“That play, if he has the same play next year,” Thomson said, “he’ll make the right decision.”