Category: Sports

ATLANTA — Derek Hill thought he had a chance at it.

Off the bat, even Austin Riley didn’t think it was gone. He barreled up a mistake from Phillies closer Jhoan Duran — who was pitching in the eighth inning as an indication of how shallow the Phillies’ bullpen is this time of year — and as he made his way toward first, Riley prayed that it would keep carrying.

“It just caught a jet stream,” said Hill.

The ball landed atop the brick wall in center field of Truist Park, taking with it the Phillies’ chances in Game 1 of the wild-card series. Riley’s three-run shot propelled the Braves to the 5-3 come-from-behind win. And it left Duran shaking his head on the mound, as the latest Phillies reliever to watch a late lead evaporate in the first postseason game.

“That’s a dagger,” Bryce Harper said.

In Game 1 of the 2024 National League Division Series, a combination of Jeff Hoffman, Matt Strahm, and Orion Kerkering coughed up a one-run lead over the Mets in the eighth inning. In Game 1 of the 2025 NLDS, Strahm gave up a three-run homer to the Dodgers in the seventh. The Phillies lost both games, and eventually both series.

Two of those relievers are not on the team anymore, and Kerkering finished the season at triple A. It was the Phillies’ best bullpen arm that lost the game Tuesday.

“In our minds, we had our best guy out there,” said interim manager Don Mattingly. “You live with this one.”

Even by postseason standards, when managers tend to become more aggressive with their pitching changes, Mattingly using his closer for the seventh and eighth was a surprising move. But the Phillies were clinging to a one-run lead, courtesy of a two-run triple from J.T. Realmuto, and the circle of trust in the bullpen has been ever-shrinking.

Should the Phillies have gotten to the ninth still with the lead, the plan for the final three outs would depend where the Braves were in the order, Mattingly said. Andrew Painter or Jonathan Bowlan were potential options, and the Phillies could have also used a combination of relievers.

It nearly worked out. Duran needed 12 pitches to handle the top of Atlanta’s order in the seventh, and got two outs on three pitches to start the eighth. But a soft infield hit from Michael Harris II to shortstop, followed by a mislocated splitter that hit Ozzie Albies gave the Braves some more life. And then Duran missed his spot to Riley with a fastball.

“It’s hard to see something like that,” Duran said. “I missed the pitch in the zone, and I paid the price.”

The early deployment of Duran wasn’t the first risk Mattingly took with his pitching plan on Tuesday.

It had been 22 days since Jesús Luzardo started a game. He faced batters for the first time on Sunday, in a four-pitch outing that lasted mere minutes. Nobody — not Braves manager Walt Weiss and his club, not even Mattingly — knew what to expect from him when he took the ball to start Game 1. Mattingly hoped he would at least begin the game “on a good foot.”

But Luzardo delivered much more than that. He held the Braves to one run and three hits over five innings, turning a 1-1 game over to Alex McFarlane. For 77 pitches, Luzardo went toe-to-toe with Atlanta ace Chris Sale.

“I feel like our bodies are pretty well-conditioned, even though I was down for three weeks,” Luzardo said. “But I feel like the long season helped condition me for that situation.”

Luzardo gave up one run in the second on a ground single up the middle from Mike Yastrzemski. An adrenaline spike helped him top out at 98.2 mph with his fastball during the outing. But as the game progressed, Luzardo felt like he was tiring. His velocity started to drop in the fourth and fifth innings, and that was the end of the line.

“He gave us more than we thought, honestly,” Mattingly said. “Just kept checking with him every inning, checking with the trainers, seeing if he was having trouble getting loose between innings. Zeus was great today.”

The Phillies managed to squeeze out a first-inning run against the 37-year-old Sale, who started the game a little erratic with his command. A walk to Kyle Schwarber and a double from Alec Bohm on an elevated fastball well above the zone got the Phillies on the board first.

The second time he walked out to the mound, though, Sale seemed back to himself, and he diced up the Phillies lineup. Sale continued his career dominance over Bryce Harper, who went 0-for-3 against him.

It briefly appeared Harper’s fortunes might be changing when he came a few feet from a towering two-run shot that would have given the Phillies the lead in the sixth. But it landed just foul, and Harper badly whiffed on a slider well outside two pitches later to strike out.

“It was close,” Harper said of the foul ball. “Not close enough.”

The Braves briefly took a lead in the seventh off McFarlane before the Phillies snatched it right back. Hill was inches from another highlight-reel catch in center on a deep fly ball from Albies at the wall, but he slightly mistimed it and the ball deflected off his wrist. Hill couldn’t corral the ball immediately, and Albies advanced to third on an RBI triple.

After the Phillies finally chased Sale from the game in the seventh, they jumped in front again with a triple of their own. Realmuto pounced on a fastball from Didier Fuentes and sent it to the right field corner, where Ronald Acuña Jr. misplayed it, allowing two runs to score.

“Obviously the triple was fun, exciting. Not too many batters later, giving up the lead, that wasn’t fun,” Realmuto said. “That’s the playoffs, though. It’s such a roller coaster, and that’s why we love this game so much, is the emotions that come with it.”

As Riley’s ball kept carrying in the eighth, it was hard not to be reminded of those other Game 1s, and what happened after them. Falling behind in a wild-card series is an even graver blow. Since the current playoff format was instituted in 2022, only one team has ever advanced to the division series after dropping the first game.

But the Phillies have done unlikelier things.

“We know what’s at stake tomorrow,” Schwarber said. “So it’s, sure, frustrating, right? Everyone walks away from that game, and everyone says, ‘What if?’ But the what ifs go away when you leave here, and everyone’s focused on the task at hand tomorrow.”

In the dugout after the final out, Schwarber noticed Cristopher Sánchez standing off by himself, staring out at the mound. Sánchez will take the ball on Wednesday as the Phillies see if they have any last-minute heroics left in them to extend their season another day.

“Let’s go. You know what I mean?” Schwarber said. “That’s our guy.”