LOS ANGELES – With one swing of the bat, Phillies designated hitter Kyle Schwarber went a long way (455 feet, to be exact) into helping his team capture a must-win game, prolong a season and probably squash a lot of sports radio talk calling for his manager’s ouster.
And after that, the Phillies throttled the Los Angeles Dodgers, 8-2, to cut the deficit in this best-of-five Divisional Series to 2-1. Game Four will be Thursday 6:08 p.m. ET.
Manager Rob Thomson held true to his pre-game promise that Aaron Nola would be his starter and lefty Ranger Suarez would be his piggyback. It was just the strange way in which it happened that had many in the Delaware Valley probably scratching their weary heads.
Though he struggled through two base runners and 22 pitches in the first inning, Nola got the Dodgers out in order in the second, the last a strikeout of pesky Andy Pages. That had Nola at 31 pitches, 21 for strikes, one hit and three strikeouts. It also got him a seat on the bench.
Thomson called on Suarez to start the third and his first pitch to nine-hole hitter Tommy Edman, a 93 MPH fastball, landed five rows deep in left for a 1-0 Dodgers lead. You could almost hear the Philadelphia groans all the way on the West Coast.
But Schwarber then silenced both sides of the country, including the sellout crowd at Dodger Stadium, by hitting his monster home run almost out of the historic venue to tie the game the very next inning, starting a three-run blitz in the fourth that propelled the Phillies to the win.
Schwarber’s first home run of the night ignited the team that had lost two close games at home, his second was a direct kill-shot on the Dodgers, a two-run blast that gave the Phillies an 8-1 lead and closed out a five-run, eighth inning off Dodgers legend Clayton Kershaw.
If this game was written out as a plan by Thomson, it couldn’t have gone any better, beginning with the starting pitching situation.
“They pretty much did exactly what we wanted,” said Thomson of Nola and Suarez. “We wanted to use those guys as close to (closer Jhoan) Duran as we could to save some of the bullpen for tomorrow if we won. Nola was really good. The plan was to go one time through the lineup and Ranger was on (leadoff hitter Shohei) Ohtani. Ended up with (Tommy) Edman leading off the third. He’s 1-for-20 with nine strikeouts against Ranger, and he hit the first pitch out of the ballpark. But, they executed perfectly.”
So did the Phillies in all aspects of the game throughout the cool Southern California night.
After Schwarber’s first homer, Bryce Harper singled and then so did Alec Bohm to center. Harper aggressively went from first to third, drawing a throw from Dodger centerfielder Andy Pages. The ball and Harper arrived about the same time, but the ball got through third baseman Max Muncy and went into the Los Angeles dugout. That allowed Harper to get home and gave Bohm third. Brandon Marsh followed with a sacrifice fly to left and the Phillies had life in a 3-1 lead.
“Yeah, big swing,” Harper said of Schwarber’s first home run. “It’s pretty cool to be able to watch him do that. Seen him do it all year. Never seen a ball go up like that, especially in L.A. at night. Super impressive. I’m glad we got on the board early. Noles threw the ball great. Ranger threw the ball great. Took a commanding lead and were able to hold it.
“It’s good anytime you go first to third and make something happen. It’s a really hard throw to make in any game. Trying to go from first to third there, make something happen, and I was able to do that. Scored and then Marsh hit a ball to the outfield and scored Bohmer there. Big time getting up 3-1 there. That’s still a really good team over there. We’ve just got to come in here and do our job and understand that we’re a really good team as well and just try to go 1-0 again tomorrow. I said it the other day, the first of three and not worry about anything else. Got to come into tomorrow and win that game and get back to Philly.”
Patience was preached as the proper approach for the Phillies offense in facing Dodger starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto on Wednesday. If the Phillies were trying to bluff their strategy, they didn’t do a very good job of it as the first four hitters of the game swung at the first pitch with no success. But that would certainly come later. Especially in the form of Schwarber.
“I’ve been very fortunate to be in a lot of postseason games in my career and it’s just a testament to baseball,” said Schwarber, now with 23 postseason home runs, which is third all-time. “It doesn’t matter if you’re hitting .100 or hitting .500. Did you win the game at the end of the day? That’s all that matters. That’s why it’s such a fun format. You’re just grinding and find a way to win a baseball game and sometimes it’s going to work out and sometimes it’s not going to work out.
“I think just trying to get back there and respond after they scored a run is a big thing for us. We’ve done a really good job, during the course of my time here, we’ve done a really good job of responding whenever something goes against us. You can look back at the first couple of games. We were in striking distance every single time, there in the ninth inning, too, in Game Two. We responded. That’s something that we have a knack for here. It’s just nice to get the answer back and then a great at-bat and we just kept it going.”
And it all started with the unorthodox, but followed plan, of Thomson to have Nola get through the lineup once and then go to Suarez, who hadn’t seen an inning yet in these playoffs.
“He didn’t tell me how long it was going to be, he only told me that it was going to be a piggyback start,” said Suarez, who gave up five hits and one run in his five innings. “But my mentality was to go as deep as I could in the game, obviously win, which was the most important thing, and then just keep the score as close as I could so I could give the guys a chance to win tonight’s ball game. And after that first pitch homer that I gave up, I just kind of settled down and that was the rest of it.”
Had this been a boxing match, the Phillies had the Dodgers on the ropes multiple times, but failed to deliver that knockout blow early, leaving two runners on base in both the fifth and seventh innings. They finally did deliver the haymaker in the eighth when they sent nine batters to the plate and gathered nine hits.
Trea Turner, Schwarber and Harper, who entered the game 2-for-21 with 11 strikeouts in the series, sparked the Phillies offense by going 7-for13 on Wednesday with four runs scored and five RBI.
Everything just seemed to work out the way it was planned.
“It’s the postseason and I’d do anything I can to help the team,” said Nola. “I knew what the situation was and loved watching Ranger go out and dominate those five innings he threw. Really kept us in the game guys exploded with the bats. That’s Kyle, man. He’s the best and he stays under control all the time. Never gets too high or too low. Comes up with big hits when we need them and he did again tonight.”
He was a savior on Wednesday, for sure.