ST. LOUIS – As the Phillies celebrated on the Busch Stadium infield, enjoying October bliss for the first time in over a decade, their well-traveled fans congregated behind the team’s visiting dugout.
“We want Atlanta,” some of them emphatically chanted to onlooking TV cameras. Those folks are getting their wish.
The Braves begin the best-of-five National League Division Series against the Phillies on Tuesday at Truist Park. The Braves and Phillies are two of baseball’s longest-running franchises, yet they’ve only met in the postseason once – when the Phillies ousted the Braves in the six-game NL Championship Series in 1993.
Forgive what some will consider overconfidence from those Phillies fanatics. They’re riding the high of a Wild Card Series win over the Cardinals, spending their weekend spoiling what St. Louis hoped would be the beginning of an all-time farewell run for Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina.
Instead, the Phillies ran right through them on their way to Atlanta.
“We know them very well,” Phillies third baseman Alec Bohm said of the Braves. “We know it’s a good team. It’s going to be a tough series, but it’s going to be fun. Nobody said it was going to be easy. You have to earn it. So it’s going to be a lot of fun. We’re going to go in there, and it’s going to be some competitive baseball, for sure.”
A pricy punchline in recent years, the Phillies broke through with 87 victories in 2022. That was only good for third place in the NL East, but it nonetheless earned their first postseason berth since 2011 thanks to MLB’s expanded format.
The last team in wasn’t the first team out. The Phillies just won their first postseason series since 2010 and made the Cardinals the lone division winner sitting out this round. With the Mets getting eliminated Sunday, the Phillies weren’t even the first National League East club to get bounced.
It’s a prideful achievement for the organization. After several years of winning the offseason, the Phillies are winning on the field, too. Their well-compensated roster is performing closer to expectations. They’re underdogs against the defending champion Braves, but they shouldn’t be discounted.
While the Braves won the season series 11-8 against the Phillies, they had only a plus-3 run differential in those games (88-85). The Braves swept the Phillies at Truist Park last month and split a four-game set in Philadelphia the following week to conclude their regular-season meetings.
“(The Braves are) really good,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said. “They hit a lot of home runs. They score runs. They have good starting pitching. They have a good bullpen and they’re well-rounded. They play very good defense. They’re well-rounded, a lot like (St. Louis). The Cardinals are a good ball club.
“Atlanta is a good ball club, and they’re the defending world champions. Until you beat them, they’re the world champions, so we got to get in there and play good baseball and play the way we played here in St. Louis.”
Philadelphia’s map to postseason success is clear: Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola need to be brilliant, as they just were in Missouri, while the power-laden offense hopefully mashes.
Wheeler and Nola, who will be delayed in the NLDS after pitching this weekend, were absolutely masterful in St. Louis. They pitched 13 scoreless innings, striking out 10 and walking one. MVP candidates Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado went 1-for-15 in the series for the Cardinals, including 0-for-8 in the deciding contest. The Phillies’ bullpen, led by Jose Alvarado and Seranthony Dominguez, outpitched the Cardinals’ unit in two games. Even the much-maligned defense behind these pitchers was flawless.
Ranger Suarez, who had a 3.21 ERA in five starts against the Braves, is expected to start Game 1 of the NLDS with Wheeler and Nola unavailable. The Braves will likely see the aces in Games 2 and 3. If the Phillies pull off an upset, it’s likely because Wheeler and Nola willed them into the next round.
“We’ve played a lot of games against (the Braves), and I’ve pitched a lot of games against them - so have a few other of our pitchers as well,” Nola said. “For the pitching staff, it comes down to executing. That’s the main thing and trying to get that lead-off guy out. They can hit. They hit for average, hit for power. They run the bases well.
“So they do a lot of things well, but we also do a lot of things well as well. And we’re definitely looking forward to that series.”
Offensively, the Phillies were sixth in MLB with 205 homers and eighth in OPS (.739). They swept the Cardinals with only one homer in 18 innings – that was courtesy Bryce Harper, who finally faces the Braves in October – proving they’ll find ways to win, but like the Braves, they dig the long ball.
The Phillies chose more offense over defense in the winter, signing outfielders Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos. Schwarber hit 46 homers, second in MLB only to Aaron Judge’s 62, and has been lauded as a leader. Castellanos has been a disappointment with a .694 OPS and 13 homers.
Harper is the front man of this band, winning his second MVP last season but only playing 99 games due to injury in 2022. His homer Saturday was his first in two weeks. The Phillies need him at MVP form to stun the Braves. Other key figures include infielders Jean Segura and Bohm, slugger Rhys Hoskins, and catcher J.T. Realmuto, another long-time NL East inhabitant who was once the apple of many Braves fans’ eyes.
The Phillies’ bats must be sizably better this week than they were against the Cardinals. They scored six runs, all it the ninth, in Game 1. But they had only one hit from their top five hitters (Schwarber, Hoskins, Realmuto, Harper and Castellanos went 1-for-19).
In Game 2, Harper had two hits while the other four went 0-for-13. Goldschmidt’s and Arenado’s uncharacteristic struggles hampered the Cardinals’ offense. The Braves’ bats shouldn’t be so feeble. The Phillies top run producers must catch fire to keep pace.
“Obviously their hitters have faced our guys a lot and we’ve faced their guys a lot,” Bohm said. “So you might try to do some different things. You might not. Who knows? But I think it’s just going to be a lot of competitive games. Their guys are going to bring their best stuff, and we’re going to do what we can do. And at the end of the day, it’s just playing the game.”
And finally, those games have higher stakes for the Phillies.
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