SAN DIEGO — It was hard to ask for a better start.
The Phillies scored four runs on five hits and made starter Blake Snell throw 38 pitches in the second. With Aaron Nola on the mound, you had to feel at least OK about the Phillies taking the first two games of the series on the road.
Maybe because the Phillies came into this game with a 6-1 record in the postseason with just about everyone contributing and nothing going horribly wrong, there was an expectation that playoff baseball could be relatively painless.
Through seven playoff games, the Phillies had won every single game in which they have had a lead in. It took until Game 2 of the NLCS for the Phillies to blow a lead.
This one just happened to be 4-0 after the top of the second with an ace starter on the mound who has been on top of his game in the month of October.
Much has been made of Aaron facing his brother Austin in the postseason and it turned out the second brother vs. brother at-bat ended up being the beginning of the end for the Phillies starter.
Ha-Seong Kim reached base on a single to lead off the fifth. The next batter Trent Grisham nearly tied the game on a long fly out to center. Both balls came off the bat at over 100 miles per hour and with Austin up for the second time against Aaron, the younger Nola does what he usually does against aggressive baserunners like Kim — hold them on. The at-bat began with three consecutive throws to first.
The younger Nola had his brother in an 0-2 count. Kim took off for first and the older Nola slapped a sinker the other way to cut the Padres lead to one.
Jurickson Profar singled on the next pitch and at that point, the Padres had first and third with the tying and go ahead runs on base and Juan Soto and Manny Machado due up next. Brad Hand began to get loose. Rob Thomson said after the game that it was too early to bring in José Alvarado.
With Soto in an 0-2 count, Nola threw an inside sinker and the former National drilled it down the right field line to tie the game. After a big strikeout against Manny Machado, Nola was taken out of the game for Hand.
“It’s frustrating,” Nola said on his outing. “I want to go out, put up zeros and go as deep as I can for these guys. The thing is that it’s a seven-game series and we’re going back home.”
Hand in that spot was certainly a risk. He stranded two runners in Game 1 of the NLDS, but during the regular season, nearly half of his inherited runners came around to score. He was in to get the lefty Jake Cronenworth out. Both Thomson and Padres manager Bob Melvin mentioned the three-batter minimum when discussing how San Diego’s five-run fifth inning unfolded. If things are different, maybe a right hander is warming up behind him to face Brandon Drury and Josh Bell.
“That’s the rule and you’ve got to live with it,” Thomson said. “But he’s had a lot of success, veteran guy. I thought that was the right guy to go to, even though you’ve got Drury and Bell behind him. Drury got a base hit. It wasn’t really hit all that hard. It looked like Bell didn’t even know he hit — where he hit the ball. Just kind of inside-outed it. Anyway, that’s the way it is.”
Hand had two strikes on Cronenworth, but the Phillies lefty missed on a slider that hit him to load the bases. Back-to-back singles from Drury and Bell, two hitters who homered against Nola earlier in the game, gave the Padres a three-run lead.
“I don’t think this little bump is going to slow him down,” Kyle Schwarber said about Nola. “I bet you he will be chomping at the bit to get back out there when his name is going to be called. We always wish he could always be great and everything, but we weren’t able to pick him up there. He’s picked us up so much over this past month.”
That’s how the first lead of the postseason got away from the Phillies. Three pitchers, Nola, Hand and Andrew Bellatti, combined to throw 46 pitches that inning. Four hitters who had two strikes reached base safely.
The Padres lineup is full of superstars. The Phillies have pitched well against the best bats in the opposing lineup so far, but San Diego in a seven-game series represents their toughest challenge so far. Grisham, who came into the series red hot, was ironically the only hitter in the Padres order that did not record a hit. MVP candidate Manny Machado went 3-for-5 with a home run.
For the second straight series, the Phillies leave a city with what they needed — a split — but the way it unfolded doesn’t leave a great impression.
The hope is for a similar ending. They’ll aim to take at least two of the next three at home.
“We went into Atlanta, won the first one, lost the second one,” Thomson said. “Disappointing game. We had a day off and came back home in front of 46,000 raucous people and played really well. I expect to do the same thing.”
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