Everyone Makes Mistakes, but the Phillies Sent Pujols, Molina, and the Cardinals Home

On ESPN2’s Phillies-Cardinals broadcast, Michael Kay and Alex Rodriguez — like everybody has sooner or later this postseason — defined why baseball has change into a Three True End result-driven sport. the gist: Pitchers have change into so good it’s onerous to string collectively sequential offense. Higher to attend for a mistake and swing like hell when it comes.

For the primary time since 2010, the Philadelphia Phillies have gained a playoff collection, and Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina have taken half in a significant skilled sport for the final time. This stuff are so due to errors: Who made them, which of them went unpunished, and which of them determined a tense 2-0 sport.

There have been heroic performances: Bryce Harper homered; Alec Bohm constructed on an ideal sport Friday by reaching base thrice, scoring, and robbing Nolan Arenado of additional bases within the fourth; Aaron Nola put to mattress for good any doubts about his fortitude with 6 2/3 innings of scoreless baseball. Even in defeat that is true — the standard of Arenado’s contact this weekend merited greater than the 1-for-8 he got here away with. Miles Mikolas and Jordan Montgomery pitched nicely sufficient for St. Louis to win, just for their offense to depart them hanging.

However each groups made sufficient errors to lose this sport. The primary was finally the decisive one, and got here on the eighth play of the sport.

From September 15 by Recreation 1, Bryce Harper had appeared in 20 video games and gone 14-for-74 with simply six unintentional walks and 4 extra-base hits, three of them doubles. Harper hasn’t performed the outfield in six months because of {a partially} torn UCL in his proper elbow. (That’s the Tommy John harm.) He missed two extra months this season with a damaged left thumb. He’s seemed like a shell of himself since returning, and when the Phillies’ season is over, he’ll in all probability reveal a Bergeronian listing of nagging accidents he’s struggled by. However you may’t throw him this:

A 76 mph curveball middle-in, on the a part of the thigh the place a classy pair of swim trunks ends. Harper’s ice chilly, however he’s not useless.

Even after the Phillies tacked on a second run within the fifth, they’d alternative after alternative to place the Cardinals to the sword, however they simply didn’t. The Cardinals couldn’t scratch out a run off three Phillies pitchers as a result of they have been hitting bullets proper at infielders, or Paul Goldschmidt saved swinging by fastballs over the guts of the plate. (If Goldschmidt wins the NL MVP award, he’ll deserve it, but it surely bears mentioning that he went 0-for-3 on Friday. Then on Saturday he had the best common leverage of any batter within the sport, and went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts. Three of these outs got here with runners on base.)

The Phillies, against this, didn’t add to their lead as a result of they saved working into outs. Within the sixth, Harper dumped a single into quick left-center area, and when J.T. Realmuto made a heads-up play to take an additional base, Harper tried to advance on the throw and was overwhelmed to the bag by a physique size. Replay confirmed that Brendan Donovan might need missed the tag, however the name stood. And honest sufficient — anybody not not less than a full grade of velocity sooner than Harper deserved to be out for taking such a danger. Two batters later, Bohm walked to place runners on the corners with two out.

Then got here a very unflattering matchup for the Phillies: Montgomery vs. Brandon Marsh. Seeing as how Marsh is near-useless towards lefties, the Phillies often platoon him with Matt Vierling:

However supervisor Rob Thomson selected to depart Vierling on the bench, maybe as a result of his workforce was successful and Marsh is the superior defender. Not solely that, the Phillies tried to attain Realmuto utilizing the perpetual rundown play, with a left-handed pitcher on the mound, Molina behind the plate, and Bohm — who has many strengths however couldn’t outrun the rising of grass — because the rundown bait. Shockingly, it didn’t work.

An inning later, Marsh hit a leadoff double, and Thomson known as for Jean Segura to bunt. This not solely gave up an out, it took the bat out of the arms of a superior right-handed hitter with an inferior left-handed hitter (Bryson Stott) on deck. Like Realmuto an inning earlier than, Marsh was left at third.

However these tactical errors went uncapitalized-upon, as no St. Louis hitter ever punished Nola for a mistake the best way Harper did Mikolas. And supervisor Oliver Marmol received away with a number of of his personal: hitting Pujols second in a collection the place he by no means noticed a left-handed pitcher, and letting Molina (.233 OBP within the common season) hit not as soon as however thrice with runners on base whereas the Cardinals have been trailing within the second half of the sport.

The baseball gods have been variety sufficient to permit Pujols to achieve in his final two plate appearances, and to grant Molina a two-out, two-strike single off Zach Eflin within the ninth. These hits gave each gamers the curtain name they deserved, as every was lifted in flip for a pinch runner. (Congratulations to Ben DeLuzio and Dylan Carlson for turning into the solutions to trivia questions.)

However they weren’t variety sufficient to grant Pujols and Molina a reprieve. The slow-motion catastrophe of Recreation 1 by no means got here. The specter of such a calamity all the time looms massive over playoff baseball, but it surely doesn’t all the time occur.

All evening, the destiny of the collection appeared to wobble on a knife’s edge. Repeatedly, the Phillies did not put St. Louis away, and repeatedly the Cardinals did not make them pay for leaving the door open. In a postseason the place one thing unprecedented appears to occur each few innings, Recreation 2 between the Phillies and Cardinals was no totally different. However the lack of a decisive blow gave the sport a nervy environment through which the historic import of the night — the tip of the street for 2 seemingly first-ballot Corridor of Famers, clearly, but in addition a watershed second for Nola, Harper, and the Phillies as a franchise — by no means generated the fulsome catharsis it ought to have.

As an alternative, the Phillies will probably be relieved to depart St. Louis with a sweep, and the Cardinals, as a lot as they’ll start to really feel the absence of two franchise icons, will remorse the alternatives they missed.