For about 27 hours, the Phillies’ magical Game 2 win over the Braves in the National League Wild Card Series, forcing a decisive Game 3, seemed like a spark.
And then that decisive game got under way. The Phillies, who tabbed Aaron Nola as the starter instead of Zack Wheeler on short rest, saw their decision backfire immediately. 3-0 Braves after one; 6-2 Braves after nine.
The Phillies’ season is over.
It was not expected to be a particularly long outing for Nola, if only because they had Wheeler waiting in the bullpen, but it was much shorter even than they planned. From the jump, the Phillies’ longest-tenured player, who has been here for the entire five-year postseason run and the seven years preceding it, didn’t have it. He got an out on one pitch, and by the time he got the next, the Phillies were down three.
Nola walked Ronald Acuña Jr. and Matt Olson on a total of 10 pitches. He started Michael Harris II with two balls. He almost threw a third. The Phillies would’ve preferred that to the 387-foot three-run homer Harris hit instead.
Nola lasted an inning and two-thirds.
The Phillies were behind the eight ball right away, and if it felt like more than a three-run deficit, there is reasoning. The Phillies’ offense, which ranked in MLB’s bottom 10 in every slash category this year, then posted the second-worst OPS in September, fell back to those norms after a 12-hit Game 2.
They had two on with no outs in the fifth, and two in scoring position with one out in the sixth. They scored one run in those frames.
By that point, it was 5-0. Wheeler entered in the third and threw four innings of two-run ball, the damage done on a two-run homer by Ozzie Albies in the fourth.
It was not quite mop-up duty. But it was hard not to watch Wheeler, one of the best postseason pitchers in the history of the franchise and the sport, and lament that he did not get the ball before the Phillies had their backs squarely against the wall.
The Braves summoned their ace from the bullpen, too, with two outs in the eighth inning. The score was 6-2 after Matt Olson had homered off Jonathan Bowlan in the seventh and Derek Hill’s leadoff triple set up a sacrifice fly in the eighth.
Bryce Harper swung through three of Chris Sale’s first four pitches, all sliders out of the zone. Harper started to remove his shin guard before he saw the dropped third strike at the backstop. He jogged a few feet before being thrown out. It was not the end, but it would’ve been a fitting one for a Phillies team that had nothing.
Alec Bohm singled to lead off the ninth in quite possibly his last at bat as a Phillie. He might be a footnote in the changes coming to the Phillies, who have not won a postseason series since 2023, this winter. Otto Kemp struck out at 11:01 p.m. ET. It marked the official end – and, with it, the beginning of an offseason that will be, in both the literal and figurative senses, long.
