Friday’s NLCS Game 3 will pit an unstoppable force against an immovable object.
The unstoppable force is a Citizens Bank Park crowd that made the defending World Series champions look completely out of their element in the NLDS, powering the Phillies to two home wins by a combined 13 runs and eliminating the NL East champion Atlanta Braves.
The immovable object is Joe Musgrove, who’s pitched in a tiebreaking Game 3 this postseason already. That was the winner-take-all Wild Card Series decider against the Mets in New York, where Musgrove dazzled, allowing one hit in seven scoreless innings to push the Padres into the NLDS — fueled by perhaps an act of gamesmanship by Mets manager Buck Showalter.
Musgrove is carrying that momentum — plus the momentum of a two-run, six-inning outing in a Game 4 clincher over the Dodgers — into Philadelphia, where a crowd attending its first NLCS game in 12 years will try to bring it to a screeching halt.
“You know you can’t avoid it,” Musgrove said when asked during Thursday’s workout day about his mindset pitching in hostile road environments. “You can’t make it go away. It’s trying to dive in and embrace those things.
“The day before I start, I put myself in uncomfortable situations. What’s it going to sound like? What’s it going to feel like? What’s my mind going to think? What am I going to do? … It creates an awareness if those moments come up in the game. If you feel like you’ve been there before, you’re ready to take it on as opposed to visualizing and dominating the whole game.”
Musgrove, who signed a $100 million extension with the Padres in July, posted a career-best 2.93 ERA in the regular season, improving upon a strong 2021 after five years as a good but not great pitcher with the Houston Astros and Pittsburgh Pirates. His only postseason experience prior to 2022 came in 2017, when he allowed six runs in 6 2/3 innings as a reliever during the Astros’ championship run.
More than half of those innings came on the road, an atmosphere that the now-29-year-old said the 24-year-old Musgrove wasn’t prepared to handle.
“I’ve been beaten down by the crowds at times early on in my postseason career,” Musgrove said. “The crowds really got to me. I think ultimately it’s just I got a way better understanding of myself and how things work. There’s certain triggers that I have and what it is that really gets to me. And being able to have some awareness of what those things are before I go into a moment like this is very helpful.”
Now?
“I almost like pitching on the road a little more than I do pitching at home. Something about having your back up against a wall and having everyone weighing down on you — something like that allows me to tap into a different level.”
That said, Musgrove hasn’t faced a crowd like the one Citizens Bank Park could provide on Game 3 since that 2017 postseason, or maybe ever. The Mets didn’t sell out the decisive Wild Card Series finale, and once the Padres took an early lead, those who were on hand quickly fell quiet.
Meanwhile, several Phillies players spoke after Games 3 and 4 of the NLDS about the “electric” home crowd in Philadelphia, and it wasn’t hard to imagine that it played a role in the 87-win Phillies cruising past the 101-win Braves with relative ease.
So maybe Musgrove’s experience isn’t enough to keep him from getting thrown off-kilter in Philadelphia. Or maybe it is.
Maybe the crowd isn’t the most important factor for the Phillies’ offense on Friday, but rather the fact that they just see Musgrove well. They tagged him for five runs in the sixth inning on June 23 in San Diego, the biggest blows being a pair of homers by Kyle Schwarber and J.T. Realmuto. Musgrove earned the loss and, coincidentally, Game 3 starter Ranger Suárez earned the W.
Musgrove entered that start with an ERA at a miniscule 1.59. The six runs he allowed was tied for the most runs (earned and total) he allowed in a start all year.
It will be tough for the Phillies to replicate that output on Friday. Then again, the way the bats came to life in front of their home crowd against Atlanta — with 17 runs in the two games combined — provides plenty of reason for optimism that no one, even Musgrove, is untouchable.
“The atmosphere is the only thing that changes,” Musgrove said. “The game is still exactly the same. I know their lineup is going to be just as amped up as I’m going to be on the mound. It’s really going to come down to who can execute better and make less mistakes.”
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