PHILADELPHIA — In the cold, harsh truth of baseball autopsy, the fabulous 2024 Phillies seem right back where they were almost a year ago.
Picking up Saturday night where they were left for dead after dropping Games 6 and 7 of the 2023 NLCS at home to Arizona, the Phillies failed to support a career night from Zack Wheeler, then didn’t get the usual support from their bullpen en route to a 6-2 defeat to the New York Mets in Game 1 of the NLDS.
Wheeler threw 111 pitches, 30 of them swung on and missed, allowing no runs and only one hit while walking four and striking out nine. He left the game to a standing ovation after seven innings, but with only a one-run lead.
“Every time he goes out there he gives us a very good chance to win,” Bryce Harper said of Wheeler. “He just threw the ball great … and obviously I felt like as an offense, we wasted that start.”
That early Phils run was provided by Kyle Schwarber, who for the fifth time in his career opened a playoff game with a home run. But after that, what essentially amounted to a Mets bullpen game was enough to bog the Phillies’ alleged offensive juggernaut down. And at home yet.
But don’t be surprised by that, fearing fans, for the Phillies have now lost three straight postseason home games, and have managed to score all of five runs doing so. The fifth run came Saturday on an RBI double in the ninth by bench jockey Kody Clemens when the Mets’ comeback win was all but secured.
Earlier, Wheeler seemed to only get tougher as the game wore on. Yet the Phillies, who won both of Wheeler’s starts in the NLCS last year, simply weren’t adding to the thin line of a lead. That set the stage for an unlikely bullpen blowup in the eighth, featuring two usually steady set-up men Jeff Hoffman and Matt Strahm.
Hoffman went to 0-2 on Francisco Alvarez, then gave up a single. He went to 0-2 on Francisco Lindor, and walked him. He started 0-2 on Mark Vientos, who would single to tie the game and trash Wheeler’s masterpiece.
“Yeah, it stinks,” Hoffman said of giving up the lead. “You definitely want to capitalize on an outing like that. (Wheeler) did everything he could to keep us ahead in that game.”
Strahm then came on and gave up a single to Brandon Nimmo to give the Mets the lead, then allowed a sacrifice fly to Pete Alonso and a single to Jose Iglesias after he fouled off seven pitches. In came Orion Kerkering, who J.D. Martinez singled off of for a 4-1 lead. A sacrifice by Starling Marte tacked on another run.
A four-run deficit late was far too steep a climb for the flailing Phillies to make.
“It’s the same thing, man, chasing balls in the dirt,” said Harper, who didn’t chase so much with two walks and a double. “We didn’t work deep into counts like we should’ve. … We’ve got to understand what they’re trying to do to us and just flip the switch as an offense immediately.”
That would be a proper timeframe in a best-of-five series that will see the Phils try to understand how to break their penchant for chasing bad pitches and break this home losing streak today in Game 2, before it really gets too late.
“Obviously, we’ve got to be better,” Harper said. “You can’t harp on this one. You’ve got to understand, and you’ve got to flush it.”
