Phillies’ season complete. Next up: the NLDS vs. the Dodgers or Reds.
Cristopher Sánchez was sharp in his final start. He’ll take the mound in Game 1 on Saturday.
In the time it usually takes him to complete two home-run trots, Kyle Schwarber put out the call.
“We’re going to ride with you guys,” he said, “all right?”
This was Sunday, a half-hour before Cristopher Sánchez’s first pitch of the Phillies’ regular-season finale against the Twins — and three hours before Nick Castellanos’ sacrifice fly decided it, 2-1 in 10 innings.
And because it will be six days before they play again — Saturday, in Game 1 of the National League division series — Schwarber grabbed a microphone for 55 seconds to thank the sold-out crowd for its support.
And to rally them for another Red October.
“We feed off all you guys here,” Schwarber said. “You know that. The Bank’s a hard place to play. So, when we come here, we start this thing off here, we need to hear all you guys buying into us.”
But before all that, some housekeeping.
The Phillies finished with a 96-66 record, one game better than last season. They had 55 victories at home, second to the 1977 team and the most in 21 seasons at Citizens Bank Park.
Fittingly, both the Reds and Mets lost their season finales. The Reds held the tiebreaker and claimed the final NL postseason berth, with 83 wins. They will play the Dodgers in the wild-card round, and the Phillies will face the winner in the divisional round.
Trea Turner returned to the lineup, as expected, three weeks after straining his right hamstring. He played five innings, went 0-for-2, and finished with a .304 average to win the NL batting crown. He’s the first Phillies batting champ in 67 years, since Richie Ashburn in 1958.
Schwarber went 0-for-3 with a walk, leaving him with 56 home runs, two shy of equaling Ryan Howard’s single-season club record. But his 33 homers at home were the most in franchise history.
Sánchez threw 21 consecutive strikes to begin the game. He blanked the Twins for 5⅔ innings, finished with a 2.50 ERA and 212 strikeouts in 202 innings, and likely will be the Cy Young runner-up in the NL behind the Pirates’ Paul Skenes. Sánchez walked off the mound to a thunderous ovation after 60 pitches.
“I told him that about 44,000 people think I’m an idiot right now for taking you out,” manager Rob Thomson said. “We want to take care of him.”
Next up for Sánchez: Game 1 of the NLDS.
» READ MORE: ‘You’ve got a closer.’ How the Phillies nabbed Jhoan Duran and Harrison Bader at the trade deadline.
For three years, Game 1 has belonged to Zack Wheeler. But the Phillies lost Wheeler for the season in mid-August to a blood clot near his shoulder that was caused by thoracic outlet syndrome. He had surgery earlier in the week, a month after getting the clot removed.
Yet in 39 games after losing their best pitcher, the Phillies got a 3.88 ERA from their starting rotation. Sánchez had a lot to do with that. He posted a 2.63 ERA in eight starts after Wheeler went down.
“He’s been great, you know?“ Thomson said. ”You lose a guy like Zack Wheeler, and I mean, everybody really stepped up. But he didn’t put too much pressure on himself and just went out there and did his thing. He was just being Sánchy and mowing people down, throwing up the strike zone. He was great. He really was.”
And from now on, each subsequent start will be the biggest of Sánchez’s career.
The ovations only get louder from here, too.
“It keeps me with my head high and with the good vibes,” Sánchez said through a team interpreter of the crowd reaction, which prompted him to salute with his cap and tap his heart. “I always say I think that pitching here at home is one of the best things that have happened to me in my career. It’s really special for me.”
While the Dodgers and Reds wage the best-of-three wild-card round in Los Angeles, the Phillies will work out at home. They will simulate a game Wednesday night, with fans in attendance. They will attempt to strike the tricky balance between getting rest after 162 games in 186 days and avoiding rust during five days without playing.
And they will decide on a division series roster.
» READ MORE: A healthy Alec Bohm is hoping to ‘flip the script’ on his season and boost the Phillies’ cleanup spot
Game 162 provided positive developments in that area, notably that Turner got two at-bats and ran well, though not at full speed, to first base on a pair of groundouts.
“I felt like I could’ve run harder than I did because I feel good, body feels good,” Turner said. “I knew if I was going to hit a ground ball somewhere I wasn’t going to do anything stupid. Today was more about getting out there, just kind of feeling it again, and more seeing pitches and being on defense.”
Max Kepler, who elbowed his way into a right-field platoon with Castellanos over the last six weeks, returned after missing three games due to illness and bashed a game-tying homer in his first game against the Twins, his former team.
Orion Kerkering, who will be a crucial peg in the bridge to closer Jhoan Duran in the postseason, stranded the automatic runner in the 10th inning before Harrison Bader scored on Castellanos’ sacrifice fly.
And when it was over, Thomson addressed the team in the clubhouse.
“There was no message, really, except that I just wanted to highlight some of the things that went on during the season that were really good and that we’re not done yet,” Thomson said. “We’ve got 11 more wins to take care of.”