Pressure Shifts To Top Of Phillies Lineup After Game 2 Defeat
Rhys Hoskins swung at the fourth pitch of the fourth inning Wednesday night and gave it a pretty good ride. The game was still scoreless, the Phillies up 1-0 in the NLDS and feeling good about their chances to glue themselves to the driver’s seat. When Hoskins is hot, that type of ball flies a few rows back into the seats of Truist Park, even on a moist night where the ball was clearly not carrying. But this one flew into Eddie Rosario’s glove on the warning track.
Hoskins took a seat, just like 27 of the 30 Phillies hitters who batted against Kyle Wright, A.J. Minter, Raisel Iglesias, and Kenley Jansen in Game 2. Two innings later, Hoskins booted a fieldable ground ball from Matt Olson that sprung the Braves to a 3-0 lead they would not lose. The Phillies put up some good swings. But October is about results.
Scratching and clawing your way to victories is vital to making a deep postseason run. The efforts from the Phillies lineup in Game 1 against the Cardinals and their bullpen yesterday certainly should not be dismissed. But having a sustainable formula to count on is all but necessary to win consistently in the postseason. And right now, the Phillies’ offense is lacking that.
Hoskins has looked better at the plate in the last two games. But he is still just 1 for 18 with no walks and six strikeouts. J.T. Realmuto is 3 for 15 with no extra-base hits. It is one thing for players in their first postseason, even veterans, to struggle. But to see Kyle Schwarber, who has 126 postseason at-bats to his name, hitless through four games is both stunning and stifling to the Phillies’ offense. His struggles are the most apparent, as he’s looked in-between pitches for most of the postseason and been particularly overmatched so far in the NLDS.
Hitting coach Kevin Long has instilled a “pass the baton” mentality in the postseason, a time when teams are consistently facing elite pitching. It’s an approach built for October when the ball does not carry as much as in the summer. But it’s one that relies heavily on getting runners on base, especially at the top of the lineup. It’s a risky approach considering the Phillies’ lineup is not structured conventionally. Other than their propensity to work walks, Schwarber and Hoskins do not profile as a typical 1-2 punch. They hit lots of home runs and are much streakier than the hitters who you usually find at the top of an order. When they are on, it makes the Phillies one of the sport’s most potent offenses.
But when they are off, it puts a lot of strain on the hitters behind them. Bryce Harper, Nick Castellanos, and Alec Bohm batted with a runner on base only once each. Yes, they went a combined 1-10, too. But the goal of the top of the lineup is to make their jobs easier. Right now, the top of the Phillies’ order is not doing so. In order for the baton to be passed, it needs to be grabbed in the first place. Yes, the Phillies built a lineup good enough to be successful when some key pieces aren’t producing. But there’s a difference between playing below expectations and simply not contributing. Right now, the Phillies’ top three hitters are closer to the latter.
Since taking over, Rob Thomson has consistently stuck with his guys. Bohm has batted higher in the lineup at times, but it seems unlikely Thomson would switch things up. Schwarber has hit lead-off almost exclusively under Thomson. Bryson Stott got some reps in that spot when Schwarber was injured in August, but he is also hitless in the postseason. Thomson’s calmness can be frustrating to fans who haven’t been through a postseason experience in so long and hear all about how quick the best-of-five Division Series goes. But just as he has all season, Thomson marches to his own beat. “They’ll be fine,” he said of Schwarber and Hoskins after Game 2. “I trust them.”
Now, the Phillies trust that a change of scenery will help flip the series back in their favor. Yes, losing Game 2 was a wasted opportunity, especially with how sharp Zack Wheeler looked through 5.2 innings. However, you would be hard-pressed to find a Phillies fan who wouldn’t have been more than content with a split in Atlanta before the series began. They still own home-field advantage in the series and will get to unleash that edge on Friday. Despite a three-hour rain delay before the first pitch, the Braves still had a strong crowd on Wednesday. But they are naturally not nearly as hungry for postseason baseball as the Phillies faithful. Just 345 days passed between Game 5 of the 2021 World Series and Game 1 of this year’s NLDS. Game 3 of the NLDS will quench a 4,025-day thirst for postseason baseball in Philadelphia.
The fast-paced best-of-five series amplifies the urgency to break Schwarber, Hoskins, and Realmuto out of their funks. But it also means that if they can find the breakout moment that all three have in them, it would be that much more consequential. Philadelphia fans have long memories, but they shrink drastically after waking through the turnstiles in anticipation of the biggest games of a season. Their emotions will be running high out of the gate because of how long the wait has been. They could boil over — or spring forward in jubilation if one big swing connects.
After a 17-day, 14-game road trip across five cities, the Phillies have made it back home. They return to a ballpark where Hoskins has a .884 OPS (.706 on the road) and Realmuto sports a .909 mark (versus .730 on the road). In the most recent game it hosted, Schwarber homered in his first two at-bats off Charlie Morton, who may start on Friday. Citizens Bank Park will not have an empty seat in it. That has only been the case a handful of times over the last eleven years, and the energy inside it will be unlike any of those. A dozen or so rough at-bats hardly diminish over a decade’s worth of anticipation. Sure, a few more could. But they could also make it all worth it.
All season long, the Phillies have found a way when the moments matter the most. In that sense, nothing about Friday is different. The Phillies began their season at home just over six months ago, and the first game was an absolute party. Game 3 has all the makings of the same type of special celebration. All the Phillies are waiting for is the swing to spark it.
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