PHILADELPHIA – The pitching recipe for the Phillies in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series was a muddled mess Saturday night.
The response by the batting order to that uncertainty was considerably simpler: Hit, and don’t stop.
The Phillies clubbed four home runs, tying a franchise record, to back a mashup of seven pitchers who scuffled their way to 27 outs in a 10-6 victory over the Padres and a 3-1 series lead.
Two games after surrendering a four-run lead in San Diego, the Phillies found themselves starting a four-run hole before they’d even batted. Yet the responded immediately in the bottom of the first, thanks to the first of two home runs by Rhys Hoskins. With J.T. Realmuto and Kyle Schwarber adding solo shots and Bryce Harper continuing his incandescent postseason, the offense pushed the Padres to the brink of elimination, with Zach Wheeler looming for Game 5 at Citizens Bank Park Sunday afternoon.
The top five hitters in the order went 9-for-18 on the night, scoring all 10 runs and accounting for nine RBIs. That group – Schwarber, Hoskins, Realmuto, Harper and Nick Castellanos – comprises the nine-figure nucleus that fostered the World Series dreams from which the team is one win away.
The Phillies played a pretty eventful game in just the first inning alone Saturday, which took 48 minutes and which neither starting pitcher survived.
Bailey Falter, improbably, ended up closest, despite how disastrous his outing felt upon his exit. He got the first two outs, then no more. Manny Machado drove a ball 379 feet to left for a solo homer, and whatever had been raveled steadily unraveled from there. Brandon Drury chased Falter with a two-run double, and Ha-Seong Kim greeted his replacement, Connor Brogdon, with an RBI single.
The Phillies went to work climbing out of the hole immediately. Schwarber singled, Hoskins homered, and Harper hit an RBI double to score Realmuto, who had walked. Four batters and no outs in, Mike Clevinger joined Falter in the showers.
It would only end up as three runs, the Phillies waiting for the bottom of the fourth to tie it. Castellanos led off with a double, then Bryson Stott scooped a single the opposite way to score him, though Stott was thrown out trying to stretch it to a double.
The lead lasted … all of one out, in the suddenly shaky hands of Brad Hand. He walked Jurickson Profar – all five batters to draw walks scored in this game – and then served up a two-run bomb to Juan Soto that put the Pads ahead, 6-4.
No lead seemed safe, despite brief respites of bullpen calm. The Padres’ Nick Martinez, for instance, inherited Clevinger’s mess and stranded Harper at second. He retired all nine batters he faced.
Manager Rob Thomson, up against it bullpen-wise, opted to play matchups with his middle relievers before deploying his long man. Brogdon, in tying his longest outing as a major leaguer, and Andrew Bellatti combined to get 10 straight outs from the first through fourth innings.
When the Padres turned to their long man, the wheels fell off. That was Sean Manaea, like his Phillies opposite number Noah Syndergaard a once-precocious talent looking to solidify the second act of his career. Saturday wasn’t it.
With one out in the fifth, he walked Schwarber, then served up a 417-foot missile to Hoskins, his MLB-lead-tying fourth home run of the postseason. It’s just the eighth multi-home run game in club history and first since Chase Utley in Game 5 of the 2009 World Series.
Realmuto walked and Harper delivered his 10th extra-base hit in nine games to give the Phillies their first lead at 7-6. With a little fortune, Castellanos singled off the bag at second base to make it 8-6.
Harper has hit safely in all nine games in the postseason, one shy of the franchise record for longest hitting streak in a single postseason. It’s also the most extra-base hits for a Phillie in a postseason, though in just 41 plate appearance, he got there much faster than Ryan Howard in 2009 (64 PAs) and Jayson Werth in 2008 (62).
Schwarber added some insurance in the bottom of the sixth with a solo blast 429 feet to center off the batter’s eye, his third home run of the series.
Syndergaard entered and got four outs before an infield single to Profar in the seventh. David Robertson extinguished the threat by striking out Josh Bell with two on, then worked a clean eighth to boot, with Thomson preferring not to use either Seranthony Dominguez or Jose Alvarado after taxing them in Game 3.
Source: Berkshire mont