PHILADELPHIA — Starting pitching and home runs have been a reliable if simple recipe for the Phillies this postseason.
If it ain’t broke …
Zack Wheeler delivered six outstanding innings, and three solo homers in the first three innings staked the Phillies to a lead with which they hung on to en route to a 5-3 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series Monday night.
Kyle Schwarber ripped the first pitch he saw from South Jersey’s Zac Gallen out for his first home run of the postseason. One out later, Bryce Harper followed with a first-pitch round-tripper, and Nick Castellanos mashed one in the second inning to make it 3-0 before the Diamondbacks had a chance to exhale the crisp South Philly air. Arizona lost for the first time in this, its sixth postseason game.
For the two teams entering the postseason with the most home runs in these playoffs at 13 each, the big fly festival wouldn’t be a surprise. Keeping the Diamondbacks in the park for all but one delivery is part of what Wheeler did so well.
He was magnificent again. After Corbin Carroll led off with a broken-bat blooper to right, Wheeler retired the next 15 batters he faced. The streak ended when Evan Longoria singled sharply to lead off the sixth and scored when Geraldo Pedromo’s fly ball to right managed to sneak out with two rows to spare to make it 5-2.
Wheeler recovered to get the top of the order to finish off the sixth. He exited after the inning, having allowed two earned runs and three hits, with eight strikeouts and no walks. Phillies postseason starters have now allowed eight earned runs in 40.1 innings pitched.
Three relievers cleaned up the final nine outs. Seranthony Dominguez ran into trouble in the seventh, walking Christian Walker and airmailing a tailormade double play ball off the bat of Gabriel Moreno. After a lineout, Alek Thomas lofted a sac fly to center to make it 5-3.
Jose Alvarado entered to extinguish the threat with a groundout to short from Emmanuel Rivera. Alvarado recorded four valuable outs, working around a two-out Ketel Marte single in the eighth.
Craig Kimbrel walked a batter and saw his command briefly desert him in the ninth. But he got Lourdes Gurriel to pound into a 5-4-3 double play to seal his third save of the playoffs and 10th career postseason save.
The Phillies wanted to get after Gallen early. He threw 24.7 percent of his first pitches to batters this season over the heart of the plate, fifth most in MLB. Batters hit .406 with a 1.064 OPS on the first pitch this year and are .376 lifetime against the first pitch.
So, Schwarber was sitting dead-red on a fastball that he got middle-in at 92 mph and sent it 420 feet at 117.1 mph off the video board in right. Harper got a 93.3 mph fastball even more elevated and sent it 420 feet to right center.
The bomb hit by Castellanos, his fifth in an otherworldly three-game streak, was a 1-1 fastball that caught too much of the outside edge of the plate and that Castellanos went with to right.
The Phillies hit nine balls hard off of Gallen, who in the regular season was in the bottom five percent in the league in hard-hit percentage (46.2) and in the bottom three percent in average exit velocity. They also feasted on a fastball that was fourth-best pitch in all of baseball this season in terms of run value.
Gallen did get through five, saving the Diamondbacks’ bullpen. The Phillies tacked on a run in the third when Trea Turner doubled and Harper singled him home. But they left a man in scoring position with a J.T. Realmuto double play.
Realmuto atoned with a two-out RBI single in the fifth to score Harper, who had walked. The Phillies squandered a rally in the fourth when Brandon Marsh singled and Johan Rojas, ending an 0-for-21 slump, doubled down the left-field line to put two on. But Marsh was thrown out at home on a ball Schwarber scalded to first that Walker bobbled but recovered.
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Phillies Notebook: IOC gives Bryce Harper a birthday gift five years early
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Source: Berkshire mont
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