HOUSTON — As the Houston Astros celebrated the franchise’s second World Series title, the Phillies began the process of mourning the sudden end of what was a memorable stretch of baseball.
The sadness wasn’t too overwhelming. Players in the Phillies clubhouse hugged and said their goodbyes. Many will be back in three months for the start of spring training while others have played their last game as a Phillie. Some players, including Kyle Schwarber, Rhys Hoskins, Alec Bohm, Matt Vierling, Garrett Stubbs and Darick Hall gathered in the corner to have a beer and chat before one last charter flight home the next day.
The 87-win Phillies, who earned a postseason berth via a spot that did not exist last year, were underdogs in every series they played in and did not trail in a postseason series until the very end. They were the only team that came remotely close to challenging the powerhouse Astros, who finished the 2022 postseason with a 11-2 record.
Sure, there’s a strong feeling of disappointment that the Phillies came up two wins short of a title, but there’s a lot to be proud of.
“I told them after the game, I said, ‘You guys have nothing to be ashamed of.’ You don’t need to hang your head for anybody, because they came to the ballpark every day and worked hard and played hard and played as a team, had a lot of fun,” manager Rob Thomson said. “They grinded through a lot of obstacles. I’m just so proud of all of ’em. I really am.”
“I think that we should definitely be proud, right?” Schwarber said. “What we went through the whole year and how we got there and things that went on through the course of the year to see how this team came closer and how we got into the playoffs and that bond got even closer after that. We kept pushing and no one believed more than us that we could do this thing.”
The Phillies squeezed out every ounce of magic they had left. Schwarber gave the Phillies a narrow 1-0 lead in Game 6 with a solo home run. Yordan Alvarez crushed all hope the Phillies had with a three-run home run past the batter’s eye in center field to give Houston the lead.
We’ll be discussing Thomson’s decision to pull Zack Wheeler, who did not allow a run through five innings, in favor of having José Alvarado face the lefty Alvarez, for a long time, but the reality is that the Phillies did not hit enough to give themselves a realistic chance of stealing two more wins against the best team in baseball.
After hitting five home runs in a 7-0 win in Game 3, the Phillies scored a combined three runs in three games. Two of those runs came on a Schwarber solo shot.
The power was there for the Phillies this postseason. They’re the first playoff team in history to have three players hit at least six home runs (Schwarber, Hoskins and Bryce Harper).
The strikeouts were also there and against a relentless pitching staff like the Astros who can elevate fastballs and get swing and misses at a high rate on offspeed pitches, the Phillies crumbled. The 71 strikeouts recorded by the Phillies lineup over six games broke a World Series record.
“You just have to give credit to their pitching staff,” J.T. Realmuto said. “From top to bottom, probably the best stuff we’ve seen this year.”
“As the old saying goes, great pitching beats great hitting,” Nick Castellanos said. “We weren’t able to really come up with the big hits and we were not able to put enough runs across the board. But we played our asses off. We competed on every pitch, we pulled for all of our teammates. We just came up short.”
There’s disappointment, but it’s refreshing for a Phillies season to end with players — and fans — ending the year with more hope for the next than what everyone is accustomed to. Too often over the last five years, it felt like the Phillies were one more September collapse away from another teardown and grueling rebuild.
They’ve silenced all doubt on that front. The conversation over the next three months as the city simultaneously enjoys the Eagles’ run of dominance and anticipates the start of the 2023 season will revolve around who the Phillies will add in free agency and how three of the best pitching prospects in the sport, Andrew Painter, Mick Abel and Griff McGarry, can contribute to the club.
These Phillies needed to prove that they can win. The 2022 Phillies didn’t win it all, but they are “winners.”
There’s optimism that what occurred over the last four weeks can lead to something greater.
“I think with this experience, we know how good we are now,” Realmuto said. We know what it takes to succeed in the playoffs, play in the World Series. Say we go on a tough one or two week stretch next year, I think this camaraderie just went off. The confidence that we have as a group now and our abilities to win baseball games, I think it’ll help us get through the tough stretches next year.”
“The other thing is that there’s the taste now,” Schwarber said. “That’s the positive thing. It’s gonna be a quick offseason now and everyone is gonna have that taste in their mouth and know what it takes to get there and how to do it. It’ll be fun.”
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