Category: Sports

The glasses that Jesús Luzardo wears on the mound, and nowhere else, are one of his many superstitions.

The Phillies lefty has said in the past that they are nonprescription, and he only wears them because he has pitched poorly without them. Earlier this season, he shuffled through different walk-out songs — “Jesus Walks” by Kanye West, then “The Chain” by Fleetwood Mac — as he went through a rough stretch of starts, finally settling on the Philly-centric “Dreams and Nightmares.” Like many starting pitchers, he’s precise about his routine.

So it seems almost paradoxical that a pitcher with customs like those would be able to adapt the way Luzardo did on Sunday. After not facing live hitters in 20 days, since his complete game against the Braves, Luzardo came out of the Phillies bullpen in the eighth inning.

He used four pitches, all sinkers, to get three straight groundouts, and push the Phillies closer to the 7-3 win over the Rays that officially clinched a wild-card berth.

“Adrenaline was definitely high, for sure,” Luzardo said in the champagne-soaked clubhouse postgame. He had traded his glasses for ski goggles.

Interim manager Don Mattingly wanted the lefty to face hitters before the postseason arrived, but he didn’t anticipate it to be in such a crucial moment in the season. Luzardo was placed on the injured list on Sept. 12 with shoulder inflammation, and had been shut down from throwing at all for a while.

Gradually, as the inflammation went down, he began playing catch and then threw an encouraging bullpen on Thursday. As the Phillies’ losing streak stretched on, the idea of Luzardo pitching in a simulated game became less likely as the they needed all hands on deck to save their season. He was officially activated from the injured list earlier on Sunday, the first day he was eligible.

“Today we needed Zeus, get those outs, get him on the field,” Mattingly said. “Make sure he’s good tomorrow. That’s a different intensity today than in the bullpen. We’ll see where it goes.”

Had the Phillies built an even bigger lead, Mattingly said he would have considered using Jonathan Bowlan as well. Bowlan is not on the injured list to preserve his eligibility for the wild-card roster, but has not pitched since Sept. 17 due to a groin strain.

Luzardo is also glad to get an outing, as short as it was, under his belt before the postseason begins Tuesday in Atlanta. He didn’t petition the Phillies coaching staff to go back out for the ninth, knowing it was tabbed for closer Jhoan Duran.

As for his role in the wild-card series, Luzardo said he’d be willing to do anything and take any role, be it relieving or even starting of the games.

“If you ask me, I say yes,” Luzardo said of starting this week. “It’s really up to the team, but I feel like I’m prepared to give the team whatever they ask, whatever they need.”

He’s viewing the playoffs as a fresh start, both for him and his injury, as well as for the team as a whole.

“You play 162 games for a reason. I think this team has what it takes, and we obviously showed it throughout a full season,” he said. “I don’t think the last four days are indicative of what we can do. I think today was.”

On the mound Sunday, Luzardo was still wearing his glasses, and Meek Mill was still playing. But nothing else was the same. He didn’t get to do his pre-start routine. He had to pause and clean his cleats before throwing his first pitch because the rain had turned the mound into mud.

But none of that was going to rattle him.

“I think the circumstances change a little bit,” Luzardo said. “So superstitions kind of go out of the window.”

Bryce Harper might’ve been the first to say it sometime around the middle of June. Or maybe it was Trea Turner. Either way, it became a motto amid the vomit-inducing ups and downs of the last few months.

Just get us in.

So, here were the Phillies on Sunday, at the end of a week from hell, with a nor’easter blowing through town, needing to win one stinkin’ game after losing four in a row to punch a ticket for tournament baseball and avoid entering the barroom debate over the worst collapse in franchise history.

And guess what? They got in.

Finally.

OK, now what?

“Everything resets, you know?” Harper said, as Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” kicked off a sudsy, smoky clubhouse celebration after a 7-3 victory over the Rays that felt more like a collective exhale. “You get into October, everything resets.”

Indeed, nothing that happened over the last six months matters anymore. Not the 9-19 start that got the first manager fired. Not the late-summer surge that began in an Iowa cornfield. And certainly not the 9-14 finish that threatened to unravel it all.

So, Game 1 of the best-of-three wild-card series begins at 2 p.m. Tuesday in Atlanta. And that’s just fine with the Phillies, who got showered with boos all week before finally cracking open the booze.

Make no mistake: They noticed. Just like they noticed how the mood in the ballpark turned when Bryson Stott lined a two-out RBI double in the first inning to give the Phillies their first lead since … checks notes … Tuesday — and the fans a reason to finally clap.

“That was one of our better crowds, I thought,” interim manager Don Mattingly said, beer goggles pressed to his forehead. “You don’t hear a lot of ‘Let’s Go Phillies’ at our games. It’s just waiting for things, right? And it would be great if it would be an uplifting type of scenario.

“In the Milwaukee series, somebody makes an out in the fourth with a guy on base, and it’s like a boo. And I know it’s the fans’ right to do it. But you can either lift up or you can hold down, and if you lift the team up, you’ve got a chance.”

Excuse Mattingly. He’s still new here, having just capped his first season with the Phillies. He got hired to be the bench coach and wound up replacing the fired Rob Thomson on April 28.

Mattingly is less familiar, then, with the narrative that has trailed the core of a team that has stayed largely intact since the unexpected World Series run in 2022. The Phillies backslid in each successive October, from the Game 7 loss at home in the 2023 NL Championship Series to last year’s divisional round loss to the Dodgers.

So, here’s Harper upon being asked about the Phillies making a fifth consecutive postseason appearance for only the second time in their 144-year history: “Yeah, I mean, you wouldn’t think that with everybody’s opinion of us.”

If you sense a chip on his shoulder, well, maybe that’s not such a bad thing … now that the Phillies are in, of course, after a lot of folks thought they were Dead Men Walking.

“We’re the type of team that, we don’t care the people’s opinions of us or what they think or what anybody thinks about our team,” Harper continued. “Obviously we didn’t play the best baseball we could in September. Should we have clinched two weeks ago? Probably, right? But we didn’t. We clinched today, and that’s how the story is written right now.”

They wrote a happy ending in Game 162 because …

• Zack Wheeler gave up one run in six innings after the game was moved up by a half-hour to begin in drier conditions, and Jesús Luzardo returned from the injured list and got three outs on four pitches in the eighth.
• J.T. Realmuto broke an 0-for-34 spell with an RBI double in the second inning after being dropped to ninth in the order for the first time in his career.
• Kyle Schwarber scorched a two-run double in the second inning, belly-flopped into second base and, in a rare display of on-field emotion, screamed to the dugout, “Let’s go!”
• Oh, and Harper fouled off a slider, fastball, sinker, and splitter in succession before lining a 111.6-mph missile into the right-field bleachers in the fifth inning.

Indeed, the Phillies pulled through because they were led by the stars of their $320 million roster.

“This was what it was supposed to be today,” Mattingly said. “For whatever reason, this was how it was supposed to happen for the 2026 Phillies. Again, I think just getting in is the key, right?”

And everybody exhaled. Even the owner.

“Look,” said John Middleton, who was 9 years old during the Phillies’ epic collapse in 1964, “I did know the possibility that we wouldn’t get in. But I wasn’t particularly worried about it.”

Why not?

“I still maintain we are the best pitching staff in Major League Baseball,” said Middleton, wearing the standard issue red T-shirt and shorts and holding googles just in case. “Better than the Dodgers. Better than anybody else. And that’s particularly true with Luzardo back and healthy. I think our hitting could be really good.

“We kind of snuck in in ‘22. We didn’t necessarily sneak in here. We weren’t playing well at the end. But we know how to play well, and we played really well today.”

If the Phillies play well in Atlanta, they might actually make it back home to see their fans again. The Braves won the NL East over them by six games and went 9-4 against them in the regular season.

It’s all irrelevant now. The Phillies got in. If they write their legacies over the next month, nobody will care that it took them 162 games to get there.

“Nothing that happened during the regular season matters anymore,” Harper said. “As a team, as a group, we’ve just got to go in, play the best baseball we can, get hot for the next couple weeks.

“We’ve never finished the job. So, we’ve got to do that.”

The Phillies are officially heading back to the MLB playoffs, though it feels more like avoiding a disaster than something to be celebrated.

Philly clinched the National League’s final wild-card spot by defeating the Tampa Bay Rays 7-3 at a dreary, storm-soaked Citizens Bank Park.

It took 162 games for the Phillies to punch their ticket to the postseason, a trip that seemed all-but-wrapped up just last week. Bryce Harper and company had a five-game lead with eight games to play, but at least the team avoided an epic collapse on par with the 1964 Phillies, who blew a 6½-game lead with 12 games to play.

It’s certainly been a wild season, catalogued by my colleague Scott Lauber:

• The 9-19 start that resulted in the firing of manager Rob Thomson and the initial revival under Don Mattingly.
• A skid after the All-Star break and a surge that began in an Iowa cornfield.
• The 8-14 finish that put them on the brink of collapse.

That’s now just the backstory as the Phillies prepare for their fifth-straight postseason run.

Here’s everything we know about the Phillies’ playoff schedule, wild-card opponent, and how to get playoff tickets if they manage to escape the wild-card round and end up back at Citizens Bank Park.

This will be updated as more information becomes available.

Phillies wild-card opponent will be the Braves

The Phillies ending up with the final wild-card means they’ll be traveling south to face the Braves at Truist Park in Atlanta.

Philadelphia went 4-9 against Atlanta this season, and lost its most recent series a couple week ago.

The good news is the Phillies have had a fair amount of playoff success against the Braves in recent years. In both 2022 and 2023, the Phillies defeated the Braves in the National League divisional series, despite Atlanta having home-field advantage both years.

MLB playoffs: 2026 Wild Card TV schedule

The wild-card round of the MLB playoffs is scheduled to begin on Tuesday.

This year it jumps from ESPN to NBC, and Phillies fans will hear a familiar voice — NBC Sports Philadelphia announcer John Kruk, who will serve as an analyst alongside C.J. Nitkowski and play-by-play announcer Matt Vasgersian. Joey Votto will also join the broadcast as an in-stadium analyst.

Tom McCarthy, the TV voice for the Phillies, will call the other National League wild-card series between the Chicago Cubs and San Diego Padres.

Here’s the wild-card TV schedule:

Tuesday, Sept. 29

• Phillies at Braves: 2 p.m. on NBC
• White Sox at Astros: 5 p.m. on NBCSN
• Red Sox at Yankees: 8 p.m. on NBC
• Cubs at Padres: 9:30 p.m. on NBCSN

Wednesday, Sept. 30

• Phillies at Braves: 2 p.m. on NBC
• White Sox at Astros: 5 p.m. on NBCSN
• Red Sox at Yankees: 8 p.m. on NBC
• Cubs at Padres: 9:30 p.m. on NBCSN

Any necessary Game 3s will take place Thursday.

NBCSN is available on Xfinity (channel 1211 in Philly), YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, and Fubo, but it isn’t currently available on Verizon Fios. All the games will also stream on Peacock, NBC’s subscription streaming service.

While NBC Sports Philadelphia won’t broadcast any Phillies games, radio announcers Scott Franzke and Larry Andersen will continue to handle play-calling duties on 94.1 WIP.

How can I get Phillies playoff tickets?

A handful of seats for Games 1 and 2 of a possible National League divisional series at Citizens Bank Park were still available on the team’s website as of Sunday morning.

Phillies fans can register a chance to purchase tickets to the National League Championship Series, should they advance that far. Registration ends at midnight on Friday, Oct. 2, and a random drawing will occur the following Monday.

The team will notify you if you’ve been randomly selected for the opportunity to purchase playoff tickets on Monday, Oct. 12.

Full 2026 MLB playoff schedule

The MLB playoffs feature 12 teams (six from each league), with three division winners and three wild-card teams per league.

Here are the National League’s six playoff teams:

1. Milwaukee Brewers
2. Los Angeles Dodgers
3. Atlanta Braves
4. San Diego Padres
5. Chicago Cubs
6. Philadelphia Phillies

Here are the six playoff teams in the American League:

1. Tampa Bay Rays
2. Cleveland Guardians
3. Houston Astros
4. New York Yankees
5. Boston Red Sox
6. Chicago White Sox

2026 MLB playoff TV schedule

Following the wild-card round, Fox will broadcast the final two rounds of the National League playoffs, while the American League games will air on TBS. The World Series will once again air on Fox.

Here’s how the MLB playoff schedule breaks down this season:

• Wild-card series (best-of-three): Begin Sept. 29 (NBC, NBCSN)
• Divisional series (best-of-five): Begin Oct. 3 (Fox, FS1, TBS, truTV)
• Championship series (best-of-seven): Begin Oct. 11 (Fox, TBS)
• World Series (best-of-seven): Begins Oct. 23 (Fox)

Phillies should benefit as ABS system makes playoff debut

This will be the first postseason to feature the automated ball‑strike (ABS) challenge system. That should benefit the Phillies, considering catcher J.T. Realmuto’s extreme success challenging balls and strikes.

As for other playoff rule changes, there will be no “ghost runners” during the postseason.

MLB’s designated runner rule puts a player on second base to begin each half-inning if a game is tied after nine innings. The rule was an attempt to preserve pitching staffs and avoid extra-long regular season games.

But during the playoffs, that rule is out the window. So if any postseason games enter extra innings, you won’t see anyone on second base.

Thankfully, MLB’s other big rule change — the pitch clock — remains in place during the playoffs. MLB games averaged 2 hours and 42 minutes through mid-season, nearly a half hour shorter than games without a clock.