Rhys Hoskins and Aaron Nola each came into Game 3 with their own set of history to render obsolete.
For Nola, much of the work in disproving the “Big Game Nola” narrative had been done in the last month of the regular season, plus his dominant Wild Card Series outing six days ago, but an extra sample never hurts. The work had yet to begin for Hoskins, who carried a postseason mark of 1-for-18 and a pivotal defensive miscue into Friday.
They delivered. Specifically: Nola delivered six-plus innings of earned-run-less baseball. And Hoskins delivered a Spencer Strider fastball into the left field seats.
Together, they delivered the Phillies to the brink of a Cinderella NLCS berth, the two biggest contributors on Friday the two homegrown Phillies least removed from the last one.
“For those two guys to be able to do that in that first playoff game at home, it’s unbelievable,” Bryce Harper said postgame. “I mean, I got chills sitting here thinking about it again.”
Each of Nola’s last several starts has overthrown the last one for the “biggest start of his career” moniker. His dominance in those outings — a 2.36 September ERA and 19 ⅓ innings without allowing an earned run in October — may be coming as a surprise to those who thought he wasn’t built for the big stage.
Not Hoskins, though. Not Hoskins at all.
“I think you’ve seen this month, in October, with the clincher in Houston and in St. Louis and now tonight, there’s no moment too big for him. And he’s as good a competitor as anybody,” Hoskins said. “Obviously extremely happy for him and proud of him that he’s able to put us in a position to win. But I don’t think anybody in that clubhouse is surprised.”
And Nola’s thoughts on Hoskins’ slump-buster?
“He just keeps pressing. He don’t ever hang his head. I’ve been with him quite a while. I never see him hang his head, no matter what the outcome is. Or if he made an error on first base, doesn’t matter,” Nola said. “He’s always pushing through, always has that confidence that he’s going to make the next play, going to get the next hit. It doesn’t really surprise me what he did tonight.”
Hoskins and Nola have lost together a lot. Nola debuted during a 99-loss 2015 season, rock bottom of the rebuild, and Hoskins joined him during a 96-loss 2017 season that preceded the four straight collapses.
That’s why, when the Phillies walked off the field to “Dancing On My Own” after a 9-1 win in their first home playoff game since an entirely different Phillies core routinely packed the stadium the way this one did on Friday, it was easy to think of Hoskins’ jubilant bat spike and Nola’s thunderous ovations as two of the moments that stuck out the most.
“We’ve been on some teams that lost a lot and kept inching our way up,” Nola said. “Every spring training, the team’s getting better. The guys getting better, getting closer as a group and finally made that push this year. It’s been fun so far.”
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