How an obscure rule could have led to interesting ending to Wednesday’s game vs. Brewers

Milwaukee — Outside the visiting clubhouse at American Family Field were multiple cases of unopened bottles of Budweiser.

The Phillies went into Wednesday with a chance to clinch a playoff berth with a win or a pair of losses from the division rival Mets and Braves. The plan was to have a modest celebration and save the big party for the division clincher.

Instead, the Phillies will have to wait at least one more day for a toast. The big one will have to wait until at least Friday. There’s still a very good chance it will happen while the team is in New York over the weekend.

With the game tied 1-1 in the ninth inning, the Brewers walked it off on a bases-loaded single by Jake Bauers that ran inside the first-base line. The loss snaps the Phillies’ impressive streak of 34 straight victories when a starting pitcher goes seven innings. It also marked the second time in as many games that the Phillies have struck out 16 times. They went all of 2023 without striking out that many times in a game. They have done it five times this season.

As the fireworks and streamers went off and the Brewers ran out to the field to celebrate their second-straight NL Central title, Rob Thomson went out to speak with home plate umpire Chris Guccione. The runner at first Willy Adames missed second base. Thomson wanted to make sure that his infielders stayed on the field just in case they had the chance to appeal. They would have if a second Brewers runners missed the next base.

If there were two outs, things would have gotten interesting. With the gold and blue colored streamers already on the field and fireworks in the air, the Phillies would have appealed to second and gotten the out, erasing the run off the board and sending the game to extras.

Rule 5.09(d): Effect of Preceding Runner’s Failure to Touch a Base

Unless two are out, the status of a following runner is not affected by a preceding runner’s failure to touch or retouch a base. If, upon appeal, the preceding runner is the third out, no runners following him shall score. If such third out is the result of a force play, neither preceding nor following runners shall score.

There probably would have been a delay between the bottom of the ninth and top of the tenth to tidy up the field. Maybe the Phillies would have won. Maybe not. It would have been reminiscent of a certain infamous 76ers playoff ending.

The confetti at the Wells Fargo Center was dropped a moment too early when a Marco Belinelli shot that many originally thought was a three to win Game 3 of the 2018 Eastern Conference Semifinals was ruled a two to tie it and send the game to overtime. The Sixers went on to lose 101-98 and fall 3-0 to the Celtics in the series.

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