In 280 BC, the people of Rhodes, a Greek city on an island of the same name, finished 12 years of construction on a 108-foot-tall statue of Helios, the Greek god of the sun. One of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, the Colossus of Rhodes loomed over the harbor as the tallest statue on earth. What awe, and perhaps fear, it must have inspired from the sailors who passed under its humbling majesty in their relatively tiny vessels.
Philadelphia has no plans to build a 108-foot-tall statue of Bryce Harper.
Not yet, anyway. Give it time. Or another game or two like the one at Citizens Bank Park on Sunday.
To watch the Philadelphia Phillies and New York Mets play an all-time epic Game 2 of the NLDS here was to understand how Harper looms like the Colossus over any postseason game in which he is a part. The Phillies fell behind 3–0, tied it, fell behind, 4–3, went ahead, 6–4, and gave up the tying runs before winning it in the bottom of the ninth, 7–6. The two ties and four lead changes all happened within the final four innings.
It was an Agatha Christie page-turner of a game, full of twists and turns and a bang-up ending. But it was Harper, the Colossus of Philly, who kept moving the plot.
Every crime writer knows introducing a loaded gun to the story is an instant injection of tension. That’s Harper. Every move made by Mets manager Carlos Mendoza, every mound visit of Mets pitching coach Jeremy Hefner and mostly every pitch thrown by a Mets pitcher seemed somehow to trace to the possibility that Harper was about to go off.
“He changes games even when he’s not in the box,” said Phillies reliever Matt Strahm. “The other team is always aware of when he’s coming up. It puts pressure on pitchers to face him with the bases empty. It puts pressure on them not to make a mistake with him.
“And still, even when they are so aware of him, he comes through in the big moment. And that’s why he’s The Showman.”
There are many ways to describe how Harper owns the big moments and interjects awe, and maybe even a little fear, in enemy sailors. But let this list stand as the best means of communicating the message:
Highest OPS, Postseason History
Ruth, Gehrig, Harper. Fill out the rest of your Seven Wonders of the Postseason World as you wish. But you start with those three.
As Harper approached me for a postgame interview on the field, he put out his hand, smiled and expressed only one regret on the night: “I really wanted that walkoff.” In the at bat before Nick Castellanos sealed the win with a single, scoring Trea Turner from second base, Harper missed by inches driving home Turner from first with a line drive down the right field line that hooked foul.
The Mets got burned when they pitched to Harper. They got burned when they didn’t pitch to Harper. They got burned when they knew Harper was coming up. They got burned by those who followed Harper.
“I love these games,” he said. “I love the big moments. This is the most fun you can have in baseball. When I’m in these spots, I never take anything for granted. My dad taught me to always be ready. Never think they’re not pitching to you, because the one time a fastball over the plate comes you won’t be ready for it.
“This goes back to when I was 12 and 13 years old. I learned my lesson. People would be saying, ‘Oh, they’re not going to pitch to Harper. They’re not going to pitch to Harper.’ And I’d stand there in the box and believe it. And then, boom! Fastball by me because I wasn’t ready.
“So, I learned a long time ago how to handle these moments. In a way, my 12-year-old self prepared me for games like this.”
The Mets decided before this series that they would not let Harper beat them. The plan: do not pitch to him in a big spot and attack the rest with spin to take advantage of all the chase in the Philadelphia lineup. The Phillies chased more this year than any of the other 11 postseason teams. According to one Mets team source: “We thought Milwaukee was a tougher team to prepare for because they don’t chase. When you have teams that chase you can exploit that.”
In Game 1, Mets pitchers threw 70% of their pitches to Harper out of the zone. The Phillies chased 33% of the time and went 0-for-12 when they went outside the zone. Castellanos chased five of the seven pitches he saw out of the zone, a 71% chase rate.
In Game 2, Mets starter Luis Severino struck out Harper his first two times up—both on chase pitches (one called a strike, the other a swing and miss).
“I knew they thought I was behind the fastball,” Harper said.
Harper next met Severino in the sixth. The Phillies were trailing, 3–0. The crowd had gone beyond nervous into the realm of nastiness, booing Castellanos for chasing spin off the plate and giving him a mock cheer when he did not chase one. Castellanos mouthed the word, “Unbelievable.” Asked later what he was thinking when he heard such derision, Castellanos, who plays the Sphinx to Harper’s Colossus, replied in typical deadpan, “I had a lot of thoughts going through my mind.”
Severino made a mistake before the third encounter with Harper. He had the bases empty and two outs—knowing he needed to face Harper with the bases clean—when he hung a sweeper to Turner, a fifth straight sweeper to a guy who had been chasing spin a second straight night. Turner rapped the mistake for a single. It was the canary in the coal mine. Severino, who had pitched brilliantly, was losing command.
With Harper due, Hefner made a trip to the mound, the last strikeout by Harper on an elevated fastball fresh on everybody’s mind, including Harper. The Mets decided to pitch to Harper, but carefully. He would get nothing but fastballs away—nothing close enough for him to get his barrel on. The only goal was to keep him in the park.
It looked like a good plan for four pitches, including one that Harper chased. The count was 2-and-2. Harper instinctively knew the Mets thought he was not on time on fastballs.
And then Severino pulled a fastball over the fat of the plate. He didn’t mean to. Harper destroyed it. It soared 431 feet, slamming into the brick batter’s eye in centerfield. The Phillies were back in the game. The crowd was back in the game.
Severino hung his next pitch, a sweeper to Castellanos. But it was so bad—a backup, high and inside breaking ball—Castellanos took it for a strike.
Severino hung the next pitch, too: another sweeper, this one over the middle of the plate. It was his fourth mistake in the zone in an eight-pitch sequence. Castellanos ripped it for a tying home run.
Explained Mendoza of the sequence, “He's our guy, especially when you have a short pen, I'm not going to be as aggressive. The way he was throwing the baseball, I don't care about third time through. He's pitching really well. And like I said, if I pull him early, then they'll have to cover 12 outs, and that wasn't the case today.”
It wasn’t long before Harper backed Mendoza into a corner again. As the next inning, the seventh, began, Mendoza ordered his closer, Edwin Diaz, to begin warming with a 4–3 lead. Diaz, he decided, would get the top of the Philadelphia lineup: Kyle Schwarber, Turner and Harper.
Why? Do the math. That pocket, if all went well, would be the last time the Mets would see those 1-2-3 hitters. Why hold back your best reliever to face the bottom of the order when Schwarber, Turner and Harper were coming up?
It was a masterful plan, the epitome of needed postseason aggressiveness when you have a game by the throat. The plan worked perfectly when Diaz struck out Schwarber to end the seventh and struck out Turner to start the eighth. The Mets had their closer on the mound five outs away from taking a 2–0 series lead back to Queens.
There was one problem: Harper.
As great a closer as Diaz has been, he wanted no part of Harper. He walked him on four non-competitive pitches. The home run off Severino had so rocked the Mets that their closer ran away from the challenge of Harper.
“It looked like he was pitching around Harper a little bit,” Mendoza said in a massive understatement. “I was fine with him pitching around Harper.”
It wasn’t a terrible idea, considering Harper keeps the October company of Ruth and Gehrig. But you better get the next hitters. Diaz did not. Castellanos sliced a single to right. Bryson Stott hooked a misplaced slider for a two-run triple.
“That 3–2 slider, I think it didn’t do too much,” Mendoza said. “But yeah, two hitters, two pitches that probably [got] too much over the plate and they got him.”
Mark Vientos, who is channeling the 2004 postseason version of Carlos Peña, tied the game in the ninth when he popped a two-run homer off a neck-high, 92-mph fastball from Strahm, a lefty. (What? Your righthanded closer, Carlos Estévez, can’t go back out there after throwing eight pitches in the eighth?)
Now it was 6–6 going to the bottom of the ninth. Harper was the fourth hitter due in the inning.
Elmore Leonard wrote this powerful opening line of his novel, Freaky Deaky:
“Chris Mankowski’s last day on the job, two in the afternoon, two hours to go, he got a call to dispose of a bomb.”
The story is immediately set in motion. The tension is pre-set. In this case it is a bomb, not a loaded gun, that ignites the drama.
The equivalent opening line to the bottom of the ninth would be this:
“Tylor Megill’s first postseason appearance, ninth inning, tie game, he got a call to dispose of a bomb.”
The best way to dispose of Harper is to face him with the bases empty. Megill was two-thirds through the task, easily getting Austin Hays and Schwarber. He made the critical error of walking Turner, the last pitch a full-count cutter that wasn’t close.
Up walked Harper, whose presence is October is so massive that it only appears that he bats out of order, the Phillies rushing him up to the plate every time a big moment arrives.
McGill hung a curveball on what became that near-walkoff foul ball. Then the New York righthander grew more prudent and didn’t throw another pitch in the zone. Harper, forcing the issue, swung at two balls and fouled them off. Eventually he gave in to the obvious and took his walk.
“He was careful with Turner,” Mendoza said of Megill. “He can take you deep, as well. And then obviously you've got to pitch around Harper.”
Obviously.
With the walk to Harper, now only a single would end the epic. Castellanos provided it.
The Mets have thrown Harper 48 pitches in two games. All but 14 of them have been out of the strike zone. He is seeing 71% of pitches out of the zone. And still, he is slashing .400/.667/1.200.
“That’s why he’s The Showman,” Phillies pitcher Zack Wheeler said, casting his eyes toward Harper as he held court with a thicket of reporters. On his head, Harper still wore the red bandana he wore during the game, the one with “The Showman” on it.
The Colossus of Rhodes stood for 54 years before it was felled by an earthquake. It took an act of God to conquer one of the wonders of the world. The Mets are still trying to figure out what it will take to neutralize this one. Harper is standing 108 feet tall over this series.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Bryce Harper’s Colossal Shadow Loomed Large in Phillies’ Game 2 Win.
