All along, the Phillies liked their chances in any postseason series, against any team, provided they were able to start Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola in the first two games. It’s what makes them dangerous. It’s probably the biggest reason they won the pennant.
But it isn’t how they were built.
It’s also not how they will win this World Series.
The Phillies have a club-record $237 million payroll and a luxury-tax bill coming due at the end of the year because owner John Middleton collects sluggers like other billionaires do Picassos and Van Goghs. Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos were his shiny new pieces this season at a cost of $179 million. And before they were prominently displayed in the batting order alongside Bryce Harper, J.T. Realmuto, and Rhys Hoskins, the fearsome fivesome was brought together for a photo shoot in spring training.
Remember the home-run projections that were spawned by those pictures? Remember the potential nicknames?
Broad Street Bashers.
Macho Row 2.0.
Sultans on the Schuylkill.
The Phillies were assembled to outslug everyone and everything, including a porous defense and shallow pitching depth. That’s how president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski pitched it to Middleton. That was the plan.
“We’re a hitting-heavy team,” Middleton recalled Dombrowski telling him in March. “We’ve got top-end pitching that’s really good. We’ve got back-end bullpen that’s really good. We’re not great fielders, so we’re going to have to slug.’”
That was true then and it’s just as true now. After splitting the first two games of the World Series in Houston — with Nola and Wheeler running on fumes and not scheduled to face the Astros again until Games 5 and 6, respectively — the Phillies must be monster mashers in Game 3 on Halloween night in Philadelphia — and really from here on out.
They will say they’ve been here before, and technically, that’s true. The Phillies split the first two games of the divisional round in Atlanta and the first two of the NL Championship Series in San Diego. But when they got home for Game 3 against the Braves, they had Ranger Suárez on the mound. Nola started the third game against the Padres.
In this Game 3, it will be Noah Syndergaard and a fleet of relievers against the Astros. The high-leverage trio of José Alvarado, Seranthony Domínguez, and Zach Eflin will be rested and available, but the Phillies won’t have Nola, Wheeler, or even Swiss Army knife Suárez available out of the bullpen. Suárez, who threw 11 pitches in relief in Game 1, is scheduled to start Game 4 on Tuesday night, followed by Nola in Game 5.
If the Phillies are still standing after that, Wheeler would take whatever he has left in the tank to the mound in Houston on Friday night.
Nola and Wheeler carried the Phillies this far, to their first pennant in 13 years, by dominating the three-round National League playoffs. But they allowed a total of 10 runs in 9⅔ innings in the first two games against the Astros, the innings toll of a long season and deep playoff run having seemingly caught up with them.
So, yeah, the Phillies had better hit the rest of the way. A lot.
Just like in Game 4 against the Padres. That was the last time that Nola, Wheeler, and Suárez were all unavailable. Left-hander Bailey Falter didn’t survive the first inning and dropped the Phillies down a 4-0 hole. But Schwarber, Hoskins, Realmuto, Harper, and Castellanos combined to go 9-for-18 with three doubles, four homers, and nine RBIs in a 10-6 victory to take command of the series. The Padres never recovered.
“We knew our offense was probably going to have to show up tonight to the best of its ability,” Harper said after that game. “We were able to do that.”
The Phillies didn’t have their Five Guys together for long stretches of the season. Harper missed two months with a broken left thumb, and after he returned, Castellanos went down with turf toe and a strained oblique muscle in his right side. Although Schwarber led the league with 46 home runs, the Phillies ranked only fourth with 202. They were fifth in the league in runs (747).
A supersize offensive output won’t be easy against the Astros. After getting stymied by lefty Framber Valdez’s curveball in Game 2, they will face breaking-ball artist Lance McCullers Jr. in Game 3. The Astros can choose from among Cristian Javier, José Urquidy, and Luis Garcia in Game 4 before going back to Justin Verlander in Game 5. Houston’s team ERA in the postseason: 2.20.
Phillies optimists will note that home has been where the runs are, especially in the postseason. With raucous crowds and ear-splitting noise at Citizens Bank Park serving as the soundtrack, the Phillies are averaging seven runs and 9.4 hits per game at home in the playoffs compared with 3.8 runs and 6.1 hits per game on the road.
“It’s about the crowd, right?” Hoskins said. “You’ve seen in some of these games, we get a big hit and then it just snowballs from there. As the home team, you can lean on that. If stuff’s not going our way throughout a game, the energy has still been there. The noise has still been there. That’s another thing we can lean on.”
The Phillies will need every boost they can get. They were built to slug, and that’s what they will need to do if this season is going to end like 1980 and 2008 did.
