ST. LOUIS — Playoff baseball is like watching a loved one defuse a bomb. It is not something that you enjoy. It is something that you endure. Every pitch is a tick on a timer that is counting down to some unknown number, every swing a snip at a tangle of multicolored wires, any one of which is liable to make the season explode. It is the type of thing that should be regulated by an international governing body. Except, this is the kind of psychological torture to which you willingly submit.
Eleven years might have been enough to make you forget about all of that. But by the seventh inning of the Phillies’ wild-card opener against the Cardinals, they had you wondering how you’d ever thought October baseball could be fun.
It can happen fast, even in normal circumstances. In the first game of a three-game playoff series, it can arrive like an errant left turn. One pitch, one swing, one sickening crack, and everything changes. José Alvarado hangs a slider, Juan Yepez pounces, and the Phillies are six outs away from a fight for their lives. This was the seventh inning on Friday afternoon.
The funny thing about baseball is that it can also happen slowly. J.T. Realmuto singles. Bryce Harper and Nick Castellanos walk. Alec Bohm takes a 100-mph fastball on the shoulder. One run down, two outs left, Jean Segura at the plate.
Boom.
“Just like when you give a little kid a toy,” Segura said. “Just jumping around and happiness.”
There was only one thing you could say, only one thing any of them could say. The infield was in and the ball was hit sharply on the ground straight at a defender and then suddenly it was bouncing free through the dirt and into right field. One run scored, and then another, and like the giant gleaming arch in center field, the whole game was bent upside down. As quickly as Yepez’s two-run home run had given the Cardinals a two-run lead, Segura’s go-ahead single begat another and then another and the Phillies were on their way to a 6-3 win.
“It was tense,” first baseman Rhys Hoskins said of the dugout during the Phillies’ six-run, ninth-inning rally. “It was tense. Obviously, we were focused. But we never thought we were out of it. I think you could see by the at-bats. I think I heard Nick [Castellanos] say earlier that he had a pass-the-baton mentality. It didn’t necessarily have to come from a hit. We had a couple walks, a couple of guys just put the ball in play when they can, and good things happen.”
Wow.
That was the word. If not in their mouths, then certainly on their minds.
“You just keep the faith,” said Bohm, whose hit-by-pitch with the bases loaded with one out in the ninth forced a run home and cut the Phillies deficit to 2-1. “There’s always a chance.”
Especially with this team. After a season in which they weathered all kinds of storms, firing their manager, climbing from eight games under .500 to 12 games over despite a litany of injuries and other assorted turmoil, the Phillies are now one game away from earning themselves a trip to a best-of-five National League Division Series against the Braves. They have two games to win one, and with their performance on Friday, they pretty much dared the world to doubt their ability to win more.
To those who are naturally inclined to skepticism, the Phillies offered plenty of fodder with which to indulge. Their high-priced and much-hyped lineup spent eight innings stymied by a mix of Cardinals pitchers who matched a superb 94-pitch outing by the Phillies’ undisputed ace. Even as Zack Wheeler limited St. Louis to three baserunners in 6 1/3 scoreless innings, the game arrived at one out in the seventh in a scoreless tie. The responsibility was going to fall to the bullpen at some point, and after Wheeler got Cardinals star Nolan Arenado to fly out, interim manager Rob Thomson decided that the time had arrived.
Alvarado took the mound having allowed just one run since the end of July. By the time he departed it, the Cardinals had doubled that total, courtesy of a walk and a two-run home run by the rookie Yepez. In the ninth, converted starter Zach Eflin allowed a run on a walk and a couple of singles before striking out Yadier Molina to end the game.
The late innings will remain a concern for as long as the Phillies remain in the playoffs. One, two, even three series isn’t enough to make up for the meltdowns we’ve seen throughout the season.
Yet they have the arms, and those arms have the stuff, and they are backed by a team that has one of the rarest of qualities: a genuine belief in its ability to pull through.
“You play 27 outs, right?” Hoskins said. “I don’t know what the number is on how many times we’ve come back, but there’s just a ton of belief in the dugout. We’ve done it all year. It isn’t anything new to us. We just have to continue to believe. That’s what we did today.”
It was fun. It was exhausting. It was postseason baseball, and after 11 long years, the Phillies made it worth the wait.
