The Playoff Game We've Been Waiting For
The Playoff Game We've Been Waiting For
After a postseason defined by strikeouts, the Phillies and Padres engaged in a thrilling, nine-inning slugfest. Hallelujah.
I need to preface this column by saying I do not care who wins the NLCS between Philadelphia and San Diego. Neither team has been to the playoffs in forever. San Diego is one of six teams that have never won a World Series. Both teams have young stars that are super-likable. My love for Juan Soto and Bryce Harper should be imminently clear to anyone who has followed me on Twitter for any length of time.
But I need to say I’m a neutral party here, because I know that for fans of these teams, this game was not awesome (until the end, if you’re a Philly fan). Playoff baseball is torture on its fanbases. As someone with an anxiety disorder, I know what it’s like to feel a gnawing pit in my stomach for four hours straight with no relief in sight. And during October, millions of baseball fans feel this way, too.
In other sports, like football, you can kind of relax when the team you’re up against has the ball on its own 10 facing third down and forever.
In playoff baseball, you’re always only five minutes away from blowing a seven-run lead. October is sublime for the fans of the teams that make it, but it’s also torture.
The Phillies got cute and started a random dude named Bailey Falter because they don’t have a fourth starter (??) or some reason. Their plan was for him to get through the Padres lineup once before turning it over to the rest of their bullpen. Falter is a lefty; manager Rob Thomson clearly thought Falter was the best option to neutralize Soto, who bats left-handed. The problem is, Manny Machado bats behind Soto and he hits right-handed.
You can guess what happened next. Falter retired the first two batters of the game (including Soto), then gave up a homer to Machado. He would not record another out. By the time Thomson pulled him, he’d surrendered three hits, a walk and four earned runs.
We’d just sat through a ball game where the Yankees (the New York Freaking Yankees!) scratched out three hits in an entire nine-inning game against the Astros. Surely a four-run first inning would be enough for the Padres to call the game and tie the NLCS at two games apiece, right?
Reader, if you missed last night’s contest I hope you are sitting down.
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The Padres rolled with Mike Clevinger, who has not been good in these playoffs. Had the Dodgers not choked away Game 4 in their Division Series vs. the Padres, they would have gotten to face Clevinger in Game 5, and they would be playing the Phillies right now. (But they got beat by San Diego, fair and square, and we’re not mad about it, nope. Not mad at all. *Screams into void*)
Anyway, Clevinger gave up three runs without recording an out before Padres manager Bob Melvin decided he’d seen enough and pulled him from the game.
According to our friend Sarah Langs at ESPN, this marked the first time neither pitcher made it out of the first inning of a playoff game in 90 years:
And then the home run derby was on, with all your faves getting in on the action. Machado homered. Soto homered. Long Game Muscle Tee Hero Kyle Schwarber homered. J.T. Realmuto homered. Rhys Hoskins—who once sent me pics of his dog, Rookie, when I was having a bad day and asked for pup pics—homered twice.
I had to triple-check that Harper didn’t homer as well, but, according to Statcast, he doubled on a ball that was hit 111 mph and traveled 378 feet. (He doubled again later in the game, but that ball wasn’t smashed like the other one).
Watching these low-scoring, high-strikeout playoff games has been like watching the mess that is Thursday Night Football. The product is awful.
But last night’s game between the Phillies and Padres was like watching a playoff shootout between Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes. It was the kind of game that turns casual observers into hardcore fans.
I know pitching and defense wins championships, but the playing field (pardon the pun) has been tilted too far against the hitters. Brainiacs smart enough to work for NASA position fielders now, based on where each hitter’s swing path will probably launch a baseball. They are almost always correct. Pitchers are out there throwing sinker balls in the high 90s! Banning the shift will help next year, but it’s unlikely to go far enough.
What we need to make this game exciting is less-dominant pitching. Maybe we move the mound back or lower it. Maybe we limit the number of pitchers a team can carry to 12 (right now it’s 13).
The Phillies eventually came all the way back from their early 4-0 deficit to win the game 10-6. I don’t need every baseball game to feature 16 runs, but this game was a hell of a lot better than those 0-0 extra-inning games in the Divisional rounds where teams broke the all-time record by striking out 40 times a game.
More of this please, and less of that.
Excellent point, Molly. And Rookie seems to like it as well.
Yet, I think that in a game where statue-erecting hitting prowess crunches out at less than a third of the time per at bat, a pitchers' duel is also well worth watching.
Perhaps not quite as exciting, but that 15 inning scoreless game in Cleveland in the WC round was rather ,well, exciting!
Curt Gowdy once said of his close friend of Ted Williams that his idea of a "perfect game" was a final score of 20-18. Then I think of our idol in Gowdy's line of work, Vin, who was asked about there being more scoring in football. He said a 21-14 game in football is actually 3-2, so it's not that big a deal.