Bryce Harper: ‘We’ll be back’ after Phillies’ World Series dreams dashed by Diamondbacks in Game 7

by Scott Lauber
Published Oct. 24, 2023, 11:37 p.m. ET

An hour after the last out was made, after all the consolatory hugs and back pats, after the owner of the team went locker-to-locker shaking hands, Bryce Harper couldn’t stop thinking about it.

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“He threw me the pitch I wanted,” he said late Tuesday.

It was a 96 mph fastball, belt-high and over the plate, with two runners on base, two out, and the Phillies trailing by two runs in the seventh inning. And Harper, well, Harper scalded it — 108 mph off the bat at a 44-degree angle, according to Statcast.

Harper repeated those numbers out loud. He shook his head.

“He beat my barrel,” Harper said, “by a tenth of a second, probably.”

Technically, it didn’t end for another two innings, but it might as well have been over right there and then. The Phillies bowed, 4-2, to the underdog Arizona Diamondbacks in Game 7 of the National League Championship Series, a shocking end to a postseason run that felt destined only a few days ago to include a return to the World Series.

Instead, it’ll be the Diamondbacks — an 84-win team that backed into a wild-card spot on the second-to-last day of the season — who will face the Texas Rangers beginning Friday night.

“We underachieved,” slugger Nick Castellanos said. “The potential of this team is so much greater than going home before the World Series. Knowing how we feel about this team and we came up short, it’s a disgusting feeling, honestly.”

» READ MORE: Hayes: Phillies’ stars disappeared as the team blew a 3-2 NLCS lead and lost Games 6 and 7, just like the Sixers

Kyle Schwarber added, “It’s not the way that we pictured this thing ending. Everyone’s got a sick feeling in their stomach.”

And it will linger for, oh, probably about four months until the Phillies reconvene for spring training in Clearwater, Fla. Maybe Aaron Nola and Rhys Hoskins will be there. Maybe not. The team’s homegrown stars and longest-tenured players will be free agents in a few weeks.

But that’s for another day. For now, there was this: A three-word vow from Harper that the Phillies, having relinquished the pennant 366 days after winning it and with a payroll verging on $250 million, aren’t going away.

“We’ll be back,” he said.

NLCS: D'backs defeat Phillies, 4-3

Game 1: Phillies 5, Diamondbacks 3 | Hayes | Murphy

Game 2: Phillies 10, Diamondbacks 0 | Hayes | Murphy

Game 3: Diamondbacks 2, Phillies 1 | Hayes | Murphy

Game 4: Diamondbacks 6, Phillies 5 | Hayes | Murphy

Game 5: Phillies 6, Diamondbacks 1 | Hayes | Murphy

Game 6: Diamondbacks 5, Phillies 1 | Hayes | Murphy

Game 7: Diamondbacks 4, Phillies 2 | Hayes | Murphy

 

First, there must be a conversation about how it came to this. Because when the final out was recorded at 11:22 p.m., when pinch-hitter Jake Cave lofted a fly ball that landed in right fielder Corbin Carroll’s mitt, 45,397 paying customers stood, silent and stunned, before filing out to the gates.

A week earlier, the Phillies romped through the first two games of the series and headed to the desert with visions of a pennant-clinching party in the pool beyond the right-field fence at Chase Field.

Instead, the Diamondbacks evened the series with back-to-back wins, coming from behind against embattled reliever Craig Kimbrel. Even then, the Phillies won Game 5 and had two chances to win the pennant at home, where they lost back-to-back games to the same opponent only six times all season.

But they fell flat in a 5-1 Game 6 loss and were unable to rally in the last five innings of Game 7. Their previously unstoppable offense went away with a whimper, mustering a total of 11 hits in the last two games.

“It’s pretty jarring,” said catcher J.T. Realmuto, who credited Arizona’s pitching for changing their looks to get Phillies hitters to chase pitches out of the strike zone. “I feel like we were playing a really good brand of baseball there to start the series, and then, things just took a turn.”

Because every postseason game, especially the losses, tends to be a referendum on the manager, let’s do this now:

» READ MORE: Murphy: Phillies collapse again as city’s Game 7 misery and a tough offseason loom

The good: Rob Thomson stuck with Alec Bohm in the cleanup spot behind Harper, and Bohm swatted a leadoff homer in the second inning, then walked and scored from first base on Stott’s gap-splitting double in the fourth.

The bad: Thomson allowed starter Ranger Suárez to face Carroll not once, not twice, but three times. The third resulted in a single that tied the game, with Carroll stealing second and scoring the go-ahead run on Gabriel Moreno’s single off reliever Jeff Hoffman.

But the series didn’t unravel on Thomson’s bullpen mix-and-match. It came apart because the D’backs got smarter and more careful with how they pitched to Schwarber and Harper. They combined for four homers in the first two games of the series; in the last five, they drew a total of 10 walks.

And in their place, the Phillies’ other big-money hitters did this:

Before Harper flew out in the seventh inning against righty reliever Kevin Ginkel, Turner got his chance. He waved at back-to-back sliders to fall behind in the count before flying out to center field.

“How it ended is only going to fuel us even more going into next year,” Turner said. “It’ll be an offseason of just thinking about it.”

For Harper, it’ll be at least that long.

“I went 2-1 [in the count], he threw me a heater, and I just, man, not being able to come through in that moment just devastates me,” Harper said. “I feel like I let my team down and let the city of Philadelphia down, as well. It’s a moment I feel like I need to come through.”

» READ MORE: Aaron Nola, Rhys Hoskins would ‘love’ to stay with Phillies but uncertainty looms after Game 7 heartbreak

Instead, Zack Wheeler went back to the mound in the eighth inning to continue the first relief appearance of his career. It’s not the Game 7 scenario in which Thomson envisioned using his ace.

But nothing about these last five games went as the Phillies envisioned.

And so, when it was over, they wandered around a solemn clubhouse, shook hands, tried to share a few laughs, and clung to their last late night together as a team. They reconnected with Hoskins, who flew in from Florida where he was getting at-bats in the hopes of playing in the World Series after knee surgery at the end of March.

“I wish I could’ve done more,” Harper said. “I wish I could’ve just gone out there and had that big hit in that moment. But also, at the same time, we’ll be back in this situation again.”