Final: Phillies 3, Astros 0
HOUSTON — 4,014 days. Six managers. 893 losses. The drought is over.
It was a long, often painful postseason drought for the Philadelphia Phillies, which ultimately spanned more than a decade. But come Friday — 11 years to the date since their last playoffs appearance — the Phillies will return to the postseason. Heck, as things stand now, they’ll face the St. Louis Cardinals, with a chance to end the careers of Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina in the same way that they brought the greatest era of Phillies baseball to a screeching halt in Game 5 of the 2011 NLDS.
There will be time in the coming days to look forward to the Wild Card series, and perhaps even back 11 falls ago, if it is indeed the Cardinals that the Phillies face.
The important thing is that the Phillies are indeed in, clinching a postseason spot with a series-opening victory over the Astros Monday at Minute Maid Park.
Kyle Schwarber led off the game with a titanic opposite-field blast, his 45th home run of the season:
That was more than enough for Aaron Nola, who carried a perfect game into the seventh inning, before allowing back-to-back base hits with two outs in the frame. Rob Thomson then pulled Nola in favor of José Alvarado, who would ultimately strike Kyle Tucker out to end the threat.
Nola went 6 2/3 innings with a trip to the postseason on the line, but that doesn’t do justice to how dominant the 29-year-old was Monday night. By striking out nine and allowing just the two hits, the longest-tenured Phillie exorcised some demons in his final start of the regular season.
For much of the night, the Phillies didn’t produce much in the way of run support for Nola. But after the seventh inning jam was escaped, the Phillies put some insurance runs on the board in the top of the eighth.
Bryson Stott led off the inning with a solo home run that just got over the wall in right field:
Schwarber followed him with his second home run of the night, which was anything but a fence-scraper:
Fittingly, Zach Eflin came in to close things out in the bottom of the ninth. One of the longest-tenured Phillies — one who has had trials and tribulations with the team and has an uncertain future beyond 2022 — closed the game out to send the Phillies to the postseason:
Ticket IQ Next Game
- Tuesday, Oct. 4 vs. Astros at Minute Maid Park
- 8:10 p.m. ET
- TV: NBC Sports Philadelphia, TBS
- Radio: SportsRadio 94 WIP
- Spanish Radio: WTTM 1680
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