PHILADELPHIA — Playoffs are always magical.
The Eagles won Super Bowl LII, and the Sixers contend every year, but, in case you’d forgotten — and we’d understand if you’d forgotten, since it’s been 11 years — the baseball playoffs are the best playoffs.
When you win like the Phillies win, it takes your breath away. Every pitch matters, a hero lurks around every corner, and you expect the unexpected.
The 87-win Phillies beat the 101-win Braves in four games to take the National League Division Series on a perfect Saturday afternoon. They begin the National League Championship Series on Tuesday in either San Diego or Los Angeles; the 89-win Padres led the 111-win Dodgers, 2-1, entering Saturday night.
“Can you believe this?” exclaimed John Middleton, the managing partner who hired and fired and spent and won. “Can you believe how this came together? It’s been magical!”
Magic comes easier when you have a $245 million roster and agree to pay a luxury tax, but he’s right: There’s sorcery in South Philly. A team that remade its pitching staff three times and fired its manager in June now rejoiced. A team that used three singles, two walks, and a hit batter in a six-run ninth inning to get its first playoff win in 11 years in St. Louis. If that wasn’t witchcraft, nothing is.
“Did you believe we’d be here on June 2?” Middleton asked.
Doesn’t matter what I believed.
What matters is, they believed.
Believe in Magic
Saturday, J.T. Realmuto hit the first inside-the-park home run by a catcher in playoff history in the third inning. He then beat out an infield hit. He’s a catcher, and he’s fast, but catchers don’t drive in two runs with their speed. Realmuto did. Of course he did.
His magic came in the middle of an 8-3 win that set off a third champagne celebration in 13 days: playoff clincher in Houston, wild-card win in St. Louis, and, now, somehow, this. “Dancing On My Own” might be their new theme song, but they’ve brought along a city and region reunited with the frenzied passion for playoff baseball. A passion absent for 11 long years.
Four wins from a World Series. Eight wins from immortality. The 45,660 lunatics waving red towels at Citizens Bank Park could smell it, like blood in the water. Like 2007, when they ended a 14-year drought. Like 2008, when they won their first World Series in almost three decades.
Now, do you remember?
If the Phillies win the World Series, they would be the third-worst team (by winning percentage) to win it all, behind the 2006 Cardinals, whom they swept, 2-0, last weekend in the wild-card round; and the 1987 Twins.
Don’t doubt them.
“That’s always been the goal — to get to where we are right now, but to get even further than that,” slugger Bryce Harper said.
He spoke like a gunslinger cleaning up a town. He’s playing like one, too. He hit his third homer of the postseason in the eighth inning Saturday. He’s 10 for 23 with a 1.437 OPS in the six playoff games, and he’s ready for the team to ride him:
“We have the group right now to do that,” he said. “I think we’re all excited for that opportunity to get to where we need to be and eight more.”
He reflects his boss.
“We’ve got more to do,” manager Rob Thomson agreed.
The implacable Canadian and former bench coach replaced his friend, Joe Girardi, as manager on June 3. Magic ensued.
They caught fire against all odds. They lost, for extended periods, their second baseman, their ace, and their closer; they cut their setup man; and they played almost the entire season with Harper, the reigning MVP, either out (thumb) or diminished (elbow).
Now, they’re 5-1 in the playoffs, and their only loss came with their ace on the mound.
“Everybody just did their job, I guess,” Zack Wheeler said. “It’s magical for me.”
Magical? Hah. It’s outright necromancy.
Built to win
The Phillies didn’t exactly need mystical intervention. They beat a 101-win team that won its fifth straight National League East title and was defending its World Series championship. They were the better team, deep and talented and steady, it wasn’t very close.
They won Game 1 with a 10-out start from Ranger Suárez against Braves ace Max Fried. They got a nine-out start Saturday from Noah Syndergaard, who gave way to five relievers, which was Thomson’s plan all along. The pitchers gave up three solo home runs, but they struck out 15.
“And we didn’t walk a guy all day,” Thomson said.
Closer Seranthony Domínguez, who missed four weeks with right triceps tendinitis and just got his job back Saturday, fanned all three Braves he faced in the ninth.
“I’m back.” he said. “I’m definitely back.”
Six pitchers, by design, shut down one of the most potent offenses in baseball.
Of course they did.
Rhys Hoskins, whose glove is sometimes allergic to horsehide, absolved himself of all his sins on Friday, with a three-run, bat-spike homer that blew open Game 3. His legend grew Saturday, when his excuse-me single in the sixth plated the Phillies’ fifth run.
The Phils and the fans were still basking in the afterglow of Aaron Nola, who’d notched a third straight lockdown start Friday. He cliched the wild-card berth, clinched the 2-0 sweep of the wild-card round, then dominated Game 3. After eight years of late-season failure, Nola, a devout Christian, must’ve sold his soul.
That same night, rookie Bryson Stott put together a nine-pitch at-bat that ended with an RBI double and started the six-run third inning. He delivered two gorgeous defensive plays to his right Saturday.
Saturday, No. 8 hitter Brandon Marsh, acquired from the Angels at the trade deadline to play center field, launched a three-run homer in the second. It was the 14th home run in his career.
Next inning, Realmuto drove a pitch 400 feet, off the 409-foot, angled, left-center field wall. It caromed, and Realmuto, an option quarterback in high school back in Oklahoma, showed off his speed. By the time he reached second base, third base coach Dusty Wathan was waving him home. Realmuto slid in headfirst, but he made it by a mile.
“It was running as fast as I can for this time of the year,” Realmuto said. “I was exhausted for about two innings”
He leaped to his feet and exchanged Bash-Brothers forearm smashes with Harper.
“When I slid into home, I couldn’t help myself. I was so excited,” he said. “Excited for this city. Excited for this team. It was one of those moments I’ll definitely remember forever.”
Improbables
Jose Alvarado, Syndergaard’s third understudy, managed a quick, clean sixth, gave up a homer then left with two outs in the seventh, arms raised, waving to a fan base that had booed him without mercy the past two seasons.
Alvarado is a 100-mph stallion, but in late May that got him sent to Triple-A for three weeks. He came back with a cutter, came back with control, and he’s been the team’s best reliever since. The crowd was his on Saturday.
“We did it for this room,” he said, waving at clubhouse sodden with bubbly and hazy with smoke. “And we did it for this city.”
Zach Eflin replaced Alvarado, which is kind of nuts, since he was the fourth starter until midseason. But his knees betrayed him again, and he returned as a reliever, then won the closer’s job, then lost it, but set up Domínguez on Saturday. Eflin struck out the first three batters and got a weak grounder for the fourth out.
Of course he did.
Almost an hour after the game, the players danced with their families on the field long after the final out. Eflin wore his black NLCS playoff T-shirt and waved his black NLCS playoff hat, thanking the throng that wouldn’t go home. Who could blame them?
It was playoff baseball in Philly. The magic was back at the Bank.
