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Alden Gonzalez
LOS ANGELES — The zeros kept piling up, the pressure kept building and then, with the bases loaded and two outs in the 11th inning Thursday, Orion KerkeringThe philadelphia phillies‘The young reliever found himself in the middle of the chaos. A slow roller off the bat of los angeles dodgers outfielder andy pages He jumped with his left foot and took a few steps forward. Baserunners were running everywhere, 50,000-plus people were going ballistic. phillies catcher JT Realmuto Tried to make everything right by making eye contact with your pitcher and urging the first baseman to make easy throws bryce harper,
But panic arose.
“Once I got the pressure on me, I thought a quick throw to JT was a little quicker throw than trying to cross-body Bryce,” Kerkering said. “Just throw a horse—.”
The ball went toward the backstop of Dodger Stadium, allowing Hyesong Kim Dodgers score winning runs win 2-1 In Game 4 of the National League Division Series. It eliminated the Phillies, bringing to an abrupt end a season in which they believed as strongly as ever that they could win it all. And while it sent the Dodgers to the NL Championship Series for the seventh time in 10 years, their hopes of becoming Major League Baseball’s first repeat champions in a quarter century are still very high.
“Pure joy,” said the Dodgers third baseman max munseyWhose team is waiting for the winner? milwaukee brewers And chicago cubs“A little bit of a laugh because I wasn’t sure what happened. The way everyone was standing around, I thought it was a foul ball at first. But then it turned into complete joy. I looked over at Andy and he was upset with the broken bat at first and then he realised, ‘Oh, I just won the game.’ Just a big roller coaster of emotions.”
dodgers reliever alex vesia Game 4 was referred to as “a heavyweight battle”, but that could describe the entire series.
The Dodgers-Phillies was a matchup of two of the game’s most talented, star-studded rosters, filled with devastating turnovers and decorated lineups. The starting pitching shined the most. Through the first three games, this series featured six traditional starting pitchers – blake snell, shohei ohtani And yoshinobu yamamoto For the Dodgers; christopher sanchez, Jesus Luzardo And ranger suarez For the Phillies – Combined for a 3.03 ERA and 37 strikeouts in 32⅔ innings.
Game 4 played out similarly. Sanchez used his hellish sinker-changeup combination to suppress the Dodgers’ hitters over the first six innings, but tyler glasnow He mixed up pitch after pitch, allowing zero runs and five baserunners. Glasnow was making his first playoff start for his hometown team after missing last year’s race due to an elbow injury and dominating one of the game’s best lineups.
Asked what that meant, Glasnow said, “Everything.”
“Just coming through here, this is what I’ve been dreaming of my whole life. And to be able to do it tonight was crazy.”
Glasnow exited with cramp issues after 83 pitches and looked Nick Castellanos Get Phillies on the board with double against RBI Emmett SheehanSanchez took the ball in the bottom of the seventh in hopes of providing another inning and getting the Phillies closer jhon duran To capture the final two. The Dodgers did not cooperate. alex call Took a walk outside, and enrique hernandez A single followed, forcing Phillies manager Rob Thomson to throw Duran to first.
After two batters, with two on, two out and first base open, Thompson intentionally walked Ohtani, who was 1 for 17 with eight strikeouts in the series, to set up a righty-on-righty matchup. mookie betsBut Duran missed a 3-2, 101.4 mph fastball, leading to the tying run. It was Duran’s first career bases-loaded walk.
“You’re not expecting it,” Thomson said. “And his ability to throw strikes, it wasn’t really expected. But it happened.”
Duran and matt stramm The Phillies got it in the ninth inning, after which they turned to their Game 5 starter Luzardo for two more. headed to the dodgers roki sasakiMuch-hyped Japanese pitching sensation who seemed to be without a role on this pitching staff a while back.
In eight starts of his major league career, Sasaki had an ERA of 4.72 and was diagnosed with a shoulder injury. He spent more than four months on the injured list and struggled to find his fastball velocity until a mechanical shift at the Dodgers’ spring training facility finally restored his coordination. The Dodgers, plagued by a troubled bullpen, tried him as a reliever, then watched him dominate cincinnati reds With a triple-digit fastball and a bad splitter in Game 2 of the wild-card round.
Sasaki did the same in Games 1 and 2 against the Phillies, striking out both. In Game 4, he took it to another level.
Nine up, nine down.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts called it “one of Penn’s all-time great appearances that I can remember.”
“I can’t say enough about his development and his contributions to this club,” Roberts said. “We’re really starting to see something special in him, and that’s why he was praised so harshly in the offseason. But what he’s done now on the biggest stage — he’s just scratching the surface.”
The Phillies attempted to get the lead in scoring position in the top of the 11th, but Vescia ended up throwing a 10-pitch inning. Harrison Bader Establishing a winning streak in the bottom half while batting with strikeouts. freddy freeman Hit a one-out single. Two batters later, Muncy struck out second. Hernandez followed by drawing a walk. Then came Page, who was going so poorly in these playoffs – 1 for 23 with six strikeouts – that miguel rojas Came out to pinch hit for him in Game 3. Page swung inward via a first-pitch sinker, then got another one out late over the plate.
He broke his bat, resulting in a 69.5 mph ground ball that had enough backspin to prevent Kerkering from fielding it cleanly.
“The first thing I noticed was he didn’t put it down the field at first,” Pages said in Spanish. “But when I saw he didn’t throw to first and instead went home, all I thought was, ‘No chance at home.'”
Kerkering’s errant throw home marked the 11th time he scored a walk-off run on an error in the playoffs, and only the second time it happened in a clinching game. The Phillies were eliminated via walk-off loss for the fourth time in franchise history – and the first since Joe Carter’s infamous home run against Mitch Williams in the 1993 World Series.
The Dodgers won a playoff series in walk-off style for the third time, but they did something even bigger: They swept the Phillies, perhaps the most talented team they will face in these playoffs.
“We knew going into this it was going to be a dogfight,” Hernandez said. “It turned out to be just that.”
