ATLANTA – Cristopher Sánchez and Bryce Harper met after the seventh inning.
The television cameras showed an incensed Sánchez moments after he was lifted from the game, screaming and throwing his glove into the tunnel.
In the face of immense pressure, Sánchez was stretched to the limit in an elimination game, throwing 116 pitches in 6 2/3 innings in yet another masterpiece without a win next to his name to show for it.
The Phillies have scored just five runs with Sánchez on the mound in five postseason starts dating back to 2023.
His frustration was justified. Sánchez was one strike away from leaving the mound with the game still tied.
Drake Baldwin, with two strikeouts against Sánchez on the day, lined a ball to right. Harper camped under it. The crowd hushed, expecting a routine play to end the inning. Then, Harper, realizing he’s too far in, rushed back. The ball over his head bounced off his outstretched glove. A run came into score, and the Braves took the lead.
“I didn’t think he hit it very hard and I realized he only hit 89 (mph), so I thought it was going to be a pop fly just right at me and then it kind of kept traveling,” Harper said.” Obviously a ball I should have caught.”
Harper, sitting in a crouch as Don Mattingly went to the mound to get Sánchez after Matt Olson’s sacrifice fly, felt the weight of the moment.
“I’ll tell you what, I was thinking about Krew, my son, what I would say to him in that situation,” Harper said.
Who knows what the backlash would have looked like had the Phillies not erased a two-run deficit to win Game 2 in 10 innings against the Atlanta Braves 4-3. The Phillies will live to see another day, with a winner-take-all Game 3 on Thursday night in primetime. The winner will take on the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Division Series.
That play, that image of Harper helplessly racing back towards the ball would have been the last image of the series, and a defining moment in Harper’s Phillies career if not for his response.
“Obviously a world of emotion there,” Harper said.
All Harper knows is pressure. He felt it when he was heckled as a child prodigy. Anything less than being the No. 1 pick was a failure in his eyes.
He feels it a little differently now that he is a superstar who has seen it all and thrived with the burden of expectations.
“I’ve been through a lot of situations to get me to this point,” Harper said. “You make a play like that, and I’m hearing it out there, obviously. But how quickly can I turn the page and just get past that moment, knowing that I’m still coming up to the plate to hit and knowing that in the postseason, it doesn’t matter what you did the at-bat before, the inning before. It’s what you do in that moment.”
Sánchez, after Alex McFarlane recorded the final out of the seventh inning, regained his composure. He found Harper on the bench and told him that he was “bound” for a big moment. It was a brief conversation. Harper nodded.
Sánchez was right. Harper followed Kyle Schwarber with a tank of his own to the Chop House in right field for a game-tying solo home run in the top of the eighth inning. It was the first time the Phillies had hit back-to-back home runs in the postseason since the 2007 NLDS.
“It’s amazing,” Sanchez said via a team interpreter. “I was inside here. I just slammed everything I had close to me.”
There was intent behind his swing. Somebody was going to pay. Dylan Lee, the Braves’ best left-handed weapon against Harper and Schwarber, left the mound to the chorus of boos.
“I wasn’t not trying to hit a homer, I can tell you that,” Harper said.
Schwarber felt relief for Harper.
“It’s not like the guy has been in right field the whole year,” Schwarber said. “He did a really great thing for us where he changes his position for us, for the club and we bring in (Luis Arraez). Goes back out to right field, it’s been how long now? He’s been doing a really great job out there for us, kind of just one of those weird line drives that kind of knuckle and things like that.
“For him to come right back and turn the page, that’s huge, right? It’s easy to beat yourself up. I’ve been there plenty of times. To not beat yourself up, to look forward to that next pitch on defense and get back into the box and to be in tune to your at-bat, that’s what it’s all about.”
Eight years in, Harper has held his end of the bargain in Philadelphia, but what a ride it’s been. He went on an all-time heater in October 2022, but hasn’t had an iconic postseason moment since 2023. His eighth-inning swing was perhaps his biggest since “the swing of his life.”
That’s because it came with a swing of emotions.
“For me, it’s how can you learn from each situation that you’re in to come out great in the next one,” Harper said.
