Phillies hitters sit with the sting of an NLDS Game 1 failure raising familiar doubts

PHILADELPHIA – It was 7:55 p.m. when Trea Turner was walking around the Phillies clubhouse on Saturday. The score, a 6-2 loss to the New York Mets, stood across Citizens Bank Park for 31 minutes. But Turner was still wearing his full military uniform. He was carrying two bats. His hat was turned backwards. Some of his colleagues took a shower and left. The sting rang through the room.

Turner needs time. He analyzed video of his at-bats from Game 1 of the National League Division Series. Batting between two lefties, Turner went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts. The Phillies went 19 batters without a hit midway through the game. This wasn’t over $300 million. But it is impossible to see these villas now and not think about last October. The seeds of doubt were sown in this stadium, and as bat after bat failed to produce solid contact by a Phillies hitter, a sold-out crowd was plagued by tension.

“You never know when it’s going to happen,” Turner said. “That’s why you have to keep pushing. Keep looking forward to that next pitch, that next opportunity. Tomorrow is a new day.”

Tomorrow is Sunday and the Phillies must win. For the first time in the postseason under manager Rob Thompson, the Phillies dropped the first game. The Phillies have failed to win the Series seven times in franchise history when they lose the first game.

So they must do something that has never been done in 142 seasons of Phillies baseball.

The Phillies lost on Saturday despite not allowing an extra base hit. Zach Wheeler had one of the greatest October pitching performances the Phillies have ever seen — 111 pitches in seven innings of one-hit ball — and they lost. They watched their two best players — Jeff Hoffman and Matt Stram — lead off every count and the Mets hung five runs on them. They took a familiar jolt, a Kyle Schwarber blowout, and still lost.

That eighth inning was 24 minutes of hell for a Phillies team built to win in October — a team that has wandered for months this season. The collapse of the bullpen was unexpected. “It was amazing,” Thompson said. “It was.” But the Phillies left the door open for a flexible New York lineup.

This game was lost in the middle of the innings when Wheeler did everything he could to carry the Phillies.

“Obviously we wasted that start as an offense,” Bryce Harper said. “It’s the same thing, man. Chasing balls in the dirt. We didn’t work as deeply into the charges as we should have. We have to understand what they’re trying to do to us and flip the switch on it being a crime.”

Same thing. What are the Mets trying to do?

“Obviously they’re going to bury stuff and try to get us to chase it as much as possible,” Harper said. “They have really good pitching. But we have really good hitters here. We just have to buckle down and understand that we’re capable of doing it.”

It was interesting, then, to hear the contrasts between the two teams after a contrasting Game 1. Brandon Nimmo, who fouled out on an 0-2 fastball off Stram, credited the Mets’ pitchers for keeping them alive. They knew that Wheeler was almost unhittable, especially with the difficult shadows that affected both attacks. But the one-time deficit allowed Nemo to “think small.” The Mets battled back in the eighth inning with five singles and a walk. They scored two runs on sacrifice flies.

“It does whatever the game tells you to do at that point,” Nimmo said. “If that’s just a sac fly, or if that puts the ball in play, or if that gets someone past — whatever it is. And all of these guys believe in going back out there with a plan, understanding the baseball situation, and not trying to make With a lot now, sometimes it turns out to be a home win or a big double or something like that.

Sometimes it doesn’t happen.

“I feel like from the first inning to the seventh inning, it was really hard to see the baseball,” Nick Castellanos said. “I think on both sides. What do we have? Three hits in the first seven innings. I think after the sun was behind the field, both teams pitched better at-bats.”

They did. But New York was better. Nimmo said he couldn’t see any strings on the ball. “So you’re literally swinging on a black ball,” Nemo said. The shadows at Citizens Bank Park are the worst, hitters said, when the mound is dark and the hitter’s eye is still bright. It was that way for most of the match.

“I don’t know if I’m seeing a lot,” Mets third baseman Mark Ventus said. “It was definitely tough baseball to see. But both teams were dealing with it.”

She was. Castellanos admitted this. The second game starts at the same time – 4:08pm, so now what?

“It’s going to be a grind,” Castellanos said. “It will be the same for us as it is for them. We will have to find a way to deal with it.”

Bryson Stott warms up in front of a rowdy crowd before the first game as shadows cover the court. (Bill Streicher/Imagine Images)

Now the survey report is clear. Teams are throwing fewer fastballs to the Phillies in the zone. They harm those who make mistakes. Opponents are throwing more off-speed pitches for both strikes and balls. The Phillies are aggressive. They will chase.

“Sometimes you’re passive, and all of a sudden you find good shots to make,” Castellanos said. “And sometimes you’re ready to hit and you don’t get anything in the zone to hit. I think the first step is just washing the waters, coming together, and understanding that this isn’t going to be easy. Just regroup and fight. That’s all we can do.”

“We have to be better,” Harper said.

Turner was contemplating his rackets. He chased down one pitch in his first at-bat, striking out three. He made a borderline 0-0 change on his second bet and called it a ‘hit’. He swung and missed on a curveball at a similar location later in the at bat. It was a ball. “You kind of think, ‘You’ve got to take a swing at this,'” Turner said. Then he based on the player’s choice.

He came to the plate in the fifth inning with a runner on second and one out. Johan Rojas had a nine-pitch walk to start the inning. His run would have been massive insurance.

Turner chased down a changeup on the first pitch and drew from it. He took the ball. He was facing a left-hander, David Peterson, who had been a starter all season but was now on his 46th pitch two days after getting the win in Milwaukee. This was Turner’s moment.

He clipped the slider down and away. It floated into foul territory and landed in the glove of Mets first baseman Pete Alonso for the second out. Harper hit. Rojas was stranded there.

“A lot of the balls I went back and looked at personally were hitting the edge of the box,” Turner said. “It’s tough to hit those pitches. I don’t know. I wish I could point something out and take those pitches or do this or do that. But I think I made the right decisions today personally. It’s more execution. And I didn’t pitch well enough.”

Maybe Sunday will be better. But time is running out fast for these Phillies.

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(Photo by Trea Turner and Bryce Harper: Rob Tringali/MLB Images via Getty Images)