Monthly Archives: October 2023

ALCS Game Six: Seriously?

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Adolis García

That was Game Five: Adolis García at home, plunked and brawling over it. This was Game Six: García’s grand slam in Houston turning a tight Ranger lead into a blowout win.

Were the Elysian Fields demigods drunk Sunday night? Did Bryan Abreu appealing his two-game suspension, enabling him to pitch if called upon, absolutely have to mean he and Adolis García would square off again, in the top of the eighth, two nights after their confrontation turned into a bench-clearing brawl, three ejections, and the Astros taking a 3-2 American League Championship Series lead?

And did García just have to shake off his fourth swinging strikeout of the Game Six evening at Abreu’s hand only to turn a tight Ranger lead into a 9-2 blowout with a grand slam in the top of the ninth? Seriously?

Of course, to both. Because a) those demigods can rarely resist the opportunity for farce. And, b) because this is baseball, where (said before, saying again) anything can happen—and usually does.

The top of the ninth was absurd enough, with the Rangers loading the pillows on Astro reliever Rafael Montero with a leadoff walk (Josh Jung), a fielding error when José Altuve couldn’t handle Leodys Taveras’s high chopper charging in from second, and Marcus Semien setting García’s moveable feast table with a sharp base hit to left.

This is where you could see those Elysian demigods snickering behind their heavenly brewskis as Astros manager Dusty Baker brought Ryne Stanek in from the bullpen. Stanek got credit for the “win” when the Astros blew the Rangers out in Game Four, and now someone among the demigods had to have had the devil on the horn reminding him to collect his due.

First, Stanek hit Corey Seager with a pitch on 1-0 to send Jung strolling home with the fifth Rangers run. Then, Stanek had García at a 1-1 draw, before throwing him a fastball right atop the bull’s eye of the strike zone. It disappeared midway back into Minute Maid Park’s Crawford Boxes faster than any known American highway speed limit allows.

Thanks, Dev, you could hear the Elysians purring. Eff you, Ol’ Splitfoot, you could hear Astroworld fuming.

Two air outs to follow ended the inning but not García’s glory. On the night Abreu could pitch while appealing his two-game suspension for throwing at García in Game Five, García—who probably should have drawn a similar suspension for starting the brawl to follow when he got into Astro catcher Martín Maldonado’s grille over the driller—made himself the Rangers’ man of the hour.

Maybe even the entire ALCS, too. Even if Rangers starting pitcher Nathan Eovaldi could stake a claim with six and a thirds’ stout two-run, five hit pitching in which he struck out fourr and walked three. But Eovaldi, the solid defenders behind him, and the solid enough bullpen bulls to follow him, made you ponder whether they were merely toying with the Astros allowing a pair of runs on a first-inning RBI single (Yordan Alvarez) and a sixth-inning sacrifice fly (Mauricio Dubón).

Before García unloaded, he’d spent the night striking out swinging twice against Astro starter Framber Valdez, once against Astro reliever Phil Maton, and of course against Abreu. He looked so overmatched in those turns at the plate you could have forgiven him for wondering whether to carry a window, a door, or a great oak tree up to the plate his next time up.

Concurrently, Rangers designated hitter Mitch Garver enhanced one of his finest postseason nights—a game-tying solo bomb in the second; a two-out single telegraphing Josh Heim’s two-run homer in the fourth—by taking out late insurance for his team. After Abreu struck García out, Garver slashed a 3-1 slider on a high line to left that bounced once, ricocheted with a clang off the scoreboard wall, and enabled road-running mid-game Rangers left field insertion Evan Carter (leadoff infield hit; steal of second) to come home in the eighth with the fifth Rangers run.

The Minute Maid audience spent most of the evening booing lustily every time García checked in at the plate and cheering just as lustily every time he struck out. Then he sliced that ninth-inning salami. That was enough to quell the crowd’s appetite and send them starting to strike for the exits before the bottom of the ninth.

And, for Rangers reliever Andrew Heaney to throw four pitches for three ground outs to end the game. If you were an Astro fan still in the ballpark, those four pitches seemed like a mercy killing, no matter that the ALCS was now merely tied at three, but given this year’s Astros’ comparative weakness on the road including a 1-4 postseason record there so far.

Just don’t ask Astros left fielder Michael Brantley. “That doesn’t matter,” he said postgame. “It’s in the past. We need to turn the page and be ready for tomorrow.” They’ll need a lot more than page turning if precedent still matters—including the one saying that no team who lost more at home than on the road in the regular season has yet reached a World Series.

“It’s something you can’t explain,” Dubón said. “We could come tomorrow and win tomorrow and everybody would forget about it. It’s part of baseball. We win on the road. This year, we didn’t win at home and we have one more game to prove it.” Unfortunately, for this year’s Astros, that last remark could be taken two ways.

The Rangers probably couldn’t care less. They were a home powerhouse (.617 percentage) and just under .500 on the road during the season. Three of the four best road teams this year (the Braves, the Orioles, the Dodgers) were punted out of the postseason early.

The Astros, number four on the road overall, might be on the threshold of a postseason exit, but they’re still the Astros, and—in the phrasing of a one-time Astros coach—they’re not out of it until they’re out of it.

And the Rangers know it. Seriously.

Ask them why it’s been the visitors walking into the other guys’ houses and looting and plundering them, and Garver is stuck for an answer. “Seems a little odd nobody is winning at home,” he said postgame. “And I would like for it to stay that way.”

Stuck for an answer, too, is manager Bruce Bochy. “That’s the million dollar question,” said the man who managed the Giants to three World Series-winning games in five years on the road. Including the first of the lot—against a different collection of Rangers, in 2010. This group won’t take the Astros for granted no matter where they’re playing.

“I said it in August, it’s going to be a dogfight all the way to the end,” said Garver. “Really, really good ball club on both sides. They have pitching. They have hitting. But so do we. It’s one game to settle it all, and I think everyone is excited for that.”

Bochy is on record prominently as saying he doesn’t really like a lot of drama. Do you think Game Six changed his mind a little? He’d just been handed the Astros’ heads on a plate courtesy of one of the most dramatic late-game detonations in his team’s history.

“It’s been entertaining with me,” he said postgame. “It’s intense. There’s no getting around it. People ask you, ‘Are you having fun?’ Yeah, it’s fun, you try to enjoy it, but it’s intense out there. That’s what I came back for, to be in this situation. It’s exciting”

Seriously? What happened to the wish for little to no drama? Maybe Bochy knows that wish’s last stand disappeared the moment García’s salami did. Seriously.

NLCS Game Five: All things small and big

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Zack Wheeler

Zack Wheeler pitching almost spotlessly in NLCS Game Five did as much to save the Phillies season as their early running and mid-game bombing did.

Ask, and you shall receive. The Phillies asked Zack Wheeler to pitch like an ace in National League Championship Series Game Five—and he did. They asked their hitters to step up and swing when it mattered—and they did. They asked their bullpen to hold fort—and they did.

Their reward for doing those things was a handy 6-1 win in Chase Field and a trip back to Philadelphia with not one but two chances to punch their World Series tickets. The Phillies, of course, not to mention the throng liable to greet them in Citizens Bank Park come Monday, would prefer it not take that long.

All it took otherwise was for the Phillies to put Games Three and Four behind them, the ones in which their overtaxed bullpen let the Diamondbacks waste a grand start by Ranger Suárez in the former and their overtaxed bull Craig Kimbrel implode them toward a come-from-ahead loss in the latter.

Not to mention Kyle Schwarber starting the Game Five ball rolling in a way you don’t expect of the bombardier who showed up nuclear in the sixth inning, beating one into the ground to take a slow enough roll toward third, a region left open with the Diamondbacks in a slight shift toward second, that he beat out for a leadoff hit.

Not to mention Bryce Harper sending him to third with a one-out single shot right back up the pipe, Bryson Stott lining him home with a single. And, Harper coming home on a double steal while inadvertently colliding with a momentarily-stunned Diamondbacks catcher Gabriel Moreno as the throw from Snakes second baseman Ketel Marte to the plate went off it. It was the first time any Phillie stole home in any postseason.

Not to mention Wheeler and his Diamondbacks counterpart Zac Gallen engaging a pitcher’s duel that was noiseless, generally, until Schwarber opened the top of the sixth by turning Gallen’s 2-0 hanging breaking ball into a satellite flying over the Chase Field pool and several rows into the seats behind it. Giving Schwarber the all-time National League Championship Series home run lead with eleven.

Not to mention Harper, one out later, wrestling back from 1-2 into a full count before driving a fastball slightly over the middle of the zone and a little further into the same general real estate where Schwarber’s leadoff bomb landed.

Not to mention J.T. Realmuto abusing the Diamondbacks’ third reliever of the evening, Luis Frias, for a two-out two-run homer in the top of the eighth, which could have been considered repayment for Diamondbacks center fielder Alek Thomas—the hero of the Snakes’ Game Four win with his unlikely eighth-inning, game-tying two-run homer—hitting Wheeler’s first pitch of the seventh over the right center field fence for the only score of the evening for his team.

Not to mention the Phillies bullpen keeping the Diamondbacks off the board the final two innings despite a couple of dicey moments in the ninth, when Evan Longoria drew a two-out walk off Seranthony Domínguez and took second on defensive indifference before Perdomo landed on first after his bouncer hit Domínguez’s leg and deflected to shortstop.

Manager Rob Thomson reached for Matt Strahm. Strahm landed a swinging strikeout on Diamondbacks rookie Corbin Carroll to finish off. The Phillies reached for ways to express how it felt to shake off such a heartbreaker as the Game Four loss.

“I just want to win. That’s it,” said Harper, whose evening included a grand first inning play when he speared Diamondbacks DH Pavin Smith’s hard grounder lunging right and onto a knee before taking it to the pad himself. “Whatever that takes, whatever that’s going to be, whatever that’s going to look like. That was a big game for us. Coming in here and getting one is huge. That’s a good team over there. We took advantage of everything we could.”

Harper also tended Moreno at once after the double-steal collision, perhaps mindful that Perdomo has been under concussion watch before in his career and was caught in the head on a backswing during the D-Backs’s wild card set. “The way he went down,” Harper said postgame, “I was making sure he was good and stable.”

(Memo to: Social media idiots. It wasn’t a dirty play. Harper came straight down the base line without trying to collide with Moreno. Moreno moving from in front of the plate to reach for the throw crossed into Harper’s path, unintentionally but technically blocking the plate without the ball in his mitt, illegally, leaving Harper nowhere to go at that moment.)

The collision to one side, Realmuto seemed less impressed by his own home run than by the double steal that made Harper the second-oldest (at 31) ever to steal home in a postseason game. (Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson at 37 remains the oldest; he did it in the 1955 World Series.) “After what [the Snakes] did to us the last two games, they had all the momentum in the world,” the Phillies catcher said postgame. “So we had to try to do something early in the game to get it back. That was a great call by [Thomson] putting that on.”

The plot was simple. Stott would take off for second and draw Moreno’s throw while stopping just short of the pad. It looked like Stott getting himself caught in a rundown, but Marte winged his throw home almost immediately after Stott stopped with Harper, instructed to “be aggressive” by Phillies third base coach Dusty Wathan, gunning it home.

“It just shows you,” said Phillies shortstop Trea Turner, “how being aggressive and putting pressure on those guys — not just them but everybody in general, to put pressure on the other side is good and it makes things happen.” Make things happen? The Phillies opened by taking a page out of the Diamondbacks’ grinding book and shoving right back before even thinking about the long ball side of their own game.

For all the Phillies’s basepath daring and bomb launching, though, Wheeler had to have been the player of the game for them when all was said and done. “He gave us exactly what we needed with where our pen was at,” said Thomson. “It’s incredible what he does,” said Harper of Wheeler, who threw 21 first-pitch strikes facing 28 batters. “It’s so much fun to watch. I love playing behind him, and it’s incredible. He’s legit, man.”

Now it’ll be up to Aaron Nola to pick up in Game Six where Wheeler left off in Game Five. As for the rest of the Phillies? Who knows what surprises they might bring? Another double steal including a theft of the plate? Another evening of acrobat defense? Another bomb or three?

You almost hope the set goes the full distance, if only to give the Diamondbacks more chances to show the talent might overcome this edition’s general lack of postseason experience. They’re a young team with a lot of upside and a lot of dynamism in their own right. They showed they, too, can exploit mistakes or misfirings in pushing this NLCS to a two-all tie in the first place.

But if they want to hang around a little longer, they’ll have to find a way to beat the Phillies in the Phillies’ own playpen, where the audience never sleeps and the noise rarely lets up before the final out. The Phillies just won their first NLCS road game. Going home, however, means a lot more to them than just scoring a run.

ACLS Game Five: Drill, brawl, and another drill

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ALCS Game Five

The Rangers and the Astros scrum in the ninth in ALCS Game Five, after Adolis García (bottom-most left) went ballistic when hit by a first pitch from Astros reliever Bryan Abreu.

With one dazzler of an American League Championship Series Game Five play, Rangers second baseman Marcus Semien may have thought he’d saved their season. With one swing an inning later, Adolis García may have thought he’d guaranteed that save.

But that swing provoked a foolhardy act by an Astros reliever costing the team said reliever plus manager Dusty Baker for the rest of the game. And thus provoked, José Altuve sent the Rangers’ season onto life support with one swing in the top of the ninth, leading to a 5-4 Astros win.

The Astros did their level best to continue proving to the Rangers that they were the unmovable force on the road, which they were all season long. The Rangers did their level best to say, “not so fast,” on Friday afternoon. At least, until García inadvertently poked the Houston bear.

There was nothing wrong with García celebrating the moment he unloaded on Astro starter Justin Verlander with Corey Seager (one-out double, then to third on Sean Carter’s single) aboard in the bottom of the sixth, sending a first-pitch fastball over the left center field fence. There was everything wrong with Astro reliever Bryan Abreu drilling García on the first pitch in the eighth.

Abreu was ejected while both benches emptied. Astros manager Dusty Baker argued so vociferously with the umpires that he was ejected post haste. When order was restored, Astros finisher Ryan Pressly had to slither out of the first-and-second jam and did it with a force out and two strikeouts to follow.

Then, Pressly had to slither out of a jam of his own making, surrendering back-to-back singles to Mitch Garver and Josiah Heim, before a line out, a fly out, and a swinging strikeout banked a game the Astros could have lost almost as readily as they won it.

In between those jams, Altuve batted with two on (Yainer Díaz, leadoff single; pinch hitter Jon Singleton, wal), nobody out, and José Leclerc on the mound for the Rangers after relieving Aroldis Chapman to retire the side in the eighth. The delay may or may not have affected Leclerc. Altuve reached down for a down-and-in 0-1 pitch and sent it up and out, over the left field fence.

No one can really prove Abreu’s intent. Watch a replay of the pitch. Astros catcher Martín Maldonado is set for a pitch coming low under the middle of the zone. The pitch shot up and in and off García’s left tricep. García got right into Maldonado’s grille as if thinking Maldonado might have called for a duster but set up to make it look unintentional.

Six umpires called drilling García deliberate. If Abreu really wanted to drill him, he might have disguised it better (say, throwing the duster on the second or third pitch, assuming there would be one) instead of letting him have it on the first pitch. Abreu probably knows well enough to know that you should worry more about getting the man out than sending him messages about previous over-exuberance—especially when you weren’t the one at whose expense he was over-exuberant.

García isn’t exactly a green rookie. It took him long enough to make the Show to stay as it is. Had he just taken his base, he might have kept the Rangers in the game instead of triggering a bench-clearing brawl that ended up possibly harming Leclerc with the extra down-time.

“Everybody on their side is going to say it wasn’t [intentional],” said Rangers second baseman Marcus Semien. “Everybody on this side is going to say it was.”

“I was saying, ‘My bad, it wasn’t on purpose’,” Abreu said postgame. “He was like, ‘bullsh@t’.”

“We know it’s the playoffs,” said umpiring crew chief James Hoye. “We don’t want to make a mistake in a situation like that. So we’re going to make sure that everybody is on the same page, that we all felt the same way. And to a T, all of us felt like that pitch was intentional.”

It’s not impossible, too, that the umpires acted more upon the moment’s emotions when ejecting Abreu for the pitch, García for launching the scrum, and Baker for arguing as wildly as he did over Abreu’s ejection. Abreu did end up hit with a two-game suspension. He could wait until before Game Six to appeal, which would keep him available for Six and Game Seven if it goes that far, though it might keep him out of the World Series’s beginning if the Astros get there.

García probably escaped suspension because he was drilled and furious, but it would not have been out of line for baseball’s government to suspend him, either, for launching the brawl in the first place instead of just taking his base. Especially since his immediate target was Maldonado, not Abreu.

“My plan for [García],” Abreu said postgame, “was just to try to get the ball up and in. That’s my plan with him—up and in, and slider down and away. I just missed the pitch and he just overreacted.”

“I think the optics of the situation are really bad,” said Rangers first baseman Nathaniel Lowe. “It’s the playoffs. You’re allowed to get excited. He got excited. He celebrated because that was a huge swing for us. To have to wear 98 [mph] on the arm after something like that, it’s pretty disappointing.”

Altuve’s ninth-inning nuke made the optics a little bit worse for the Rangers now. The ALCS moves back to Houston. Granted the Astros weren’t a great road team this season, granted the Rangers took it to them in the first two games in Houston this set, but the Astros are not exactly pushovers. Especially not with someone like Mighty Mouse able to hit bombs when the eleventh hour is about to toll.

But it doesn’t keep Baker from a few trepidations over whether the García drill might linger in the minds of both teams if things get testy in Game Six, which is scheduled to pit Framber Valdez starting for the Astros against Nathan Eovaldi for the Rangers.

“I don’t have a crystal ball,” he said Saturday during a workout in Houston. “I mean, it’s going to be what it’s going to be. You have to wait and see, just like me. We don’t script it; it just happens.” That’s just about the last thing either team needs right now.

NLCS Game Four: Second verse, worse than the first?

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Craig Kimbrel, Alek Thomas

Diamondbacks pinch hitter Alek Thomas hitting the game re-tying home run off Phillies reliever Craig Kimbrel in the bottom of the Game Four eighth.

“He’ll be available tomorrow,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said of his just-chastened reliever Craig Kimbrel after National League Championship Series Game Three ended with Kimbrel surrendering a game-ending, game-losing RBI single, “and he’ll be ready to go.” Those may yet prove to be the nine most frightening words in the Phillies’ or their fans’ vocabularies. This week, this weekend, and maybe this year.

They may not necessarily bring Kimbrel himself much comfort in his heart of hearts, either.

Let’s be absolutely fair and say what we still can’t bring ourselves to say while we’re busy booing, hissing, and dreaming up new and snarkier insults to spread all over social media. There isn’t a professional baseball player alive who doesn’t go onto the field knowing that one mistake, one errant swing, one misstep, one missed pitch, could turn him into a fan piñata for life, or close enough to it.

Let’s also be absolutely fair and say Cardiac Craig didn’t cost his team the pennant yet. The game he allowed the Diamondbacks to tie so late, before his successor reliever José Alvarado served the RBI hit that broke the tie to stay, did nothing worse than tie this NLCS at two games each. Neither team’s season is over just yet.

But is Thomson just as willing to say after Game Four what he said of Kimbrel after he surrendered the Game Three-losing hit?

All Kimbrel had to do going out for the bottom of the eighth inning Friday night was keep the frisky young Diamondbacks from doing anything about a late and hard-earned 5-3 Philadelphia lead. He wasn’t even asked to finish the game. Just keep it there before Thomson could hand off to, say, José Alvarado for the ninth.

Groucho Marx would say it was “so simple a child of five could do it. Now, somebody send for a child of five.” It’s not impossible that a child of five could have come away with only a little singe. Kimbrel came away deep fried.

For all the gags about his high wire relief style, nobody pretends it’s fun to surrender a late, game-turning home run at all. There isn’t a child alive who dreams of going out to the mound in one of The Big Ones and getting his brains blown out. But it really becomes a microcosmic season in hell when it’s pinch hit by a spaghetti bat whose major league value over two seasons is plus defense in center field, enough to atone for the weak bat with nineteen defensive runs saved above the league average.

The fair supposition was that Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo sent Alek Thomas out to pinch hit for third baseman Emmanuel Rivera hoping only that a lefthanded bat against the righthanded Kimbrel might pick up enough of a hit to push Lourdes Gurriel, Jr. from second to third.

Kimbrel had opened by feeding Gurriel—who’d robbed J.T. Realmuto of at least extra bases with a leaping catch at the fence in the second—a 2-2 fastball to hit into left for a leadoff double. Then, after designated hitter Evan Longoria lined out to left, Kimbrel started behind Thomas, 3-1. It became 3-2 after Thomas fouled one off.

Then, Kimbrel served up a fastball just enough up and off the middle of the plate. It wasn’t a terrible pitch. Nothing on Thomas’s resume through that moment suggested he’d get anything better with it than a line drive base hit the other way, possibly to be stopped before it left the infield.

But the spaghetti bat pulled it, somehow, into the Chase Field pool behind the right field fence. Tying the game at five each. Tying the stomachs of Philadelphia fans in the ballpark and back in the City of Brotherly Love into knots. It wasn’t the game-losing hit by any definition, but those fans could only have thought, second verse, worse than the first.

A called strikeout later, Kimbrel threw Ketel Marte a meatball right down the pipe and Marte rapped it into left for a base hit. Only when Kimbrel plunked Corbin Carroll on the first pitch did Thomson reach for further relief and bring Alvarado in.

Too late. Alvarado fell behind Gabriel Moreno 3-1, then Moreno singled up the pipe to score Marte for the 6-5 Snakes lead the Phillies didn’t overthrow in the ninth. (Yes. It’s more than a little unfair to hang Kimbrel with the “loss” when he wasn’t even on the mound to surrender the hit that plated what proved the winning run.)

Maybe we should say couldn’t. Kyle Schwarber—who’d first put the Phillies on the scoreboard with a leadoff blast in the top of the fourth—hit Diamondbacks finisher Paul Sewald’s first two-out pitch into the right field corner for a double. But Sewald got Trea Turner to strike out swinging for the game.

What happens to Kimbrel in these moments during such postseasons? What happens to any relief pitcher whose line of work includes going into a game tasked with holding a tight lead, escaping a nasty jam, or just finishing off the opposition in the final frame, only to see it blow up in a single pitch?

The best of that profession had to have their moments of doubt. The best of that profession have been broken in the moment, even and especially the biggest moment. Even Mariano Rivera, the Hall of Famer whose closing career postseason statistics would equal a fluke regular season for a lesser talent, suffered the horror of losing a World Series with one pitch to an ancient Diamondback named Luis Gonzalez.

The Mariano shook that one off, picked himself up, and went on with his Hall of Fame career. Kimbrel generally does likewise after an outing, even if he leaves behind a trail of work that tells observers that, even when he comes out alive, it still feels as though his team lost instead of won.

If the moments are too big for Kimbrel, he almost never lets it show. If they’re too big for him, he probably wouldn’t go out there time and again risking a game, his reputation, and maybe his (and his team’s) nervous system. He’s known both off the charts success and off the charts faltering, regular and postseason alike. Since (and especially during) the 2018 postseason, Kimbrel outings leave people feeling often enough as though his teams lose even when they win.

At 35 years old, Kimbrel must wonder to himself how many more such moments (and how many dollars on his contract) are worth the strain. Others, of course, must wonder how many more such moments the Phillies are willing to risk. They’ll have a spiritual advantage getting the set back to Citizens Bank Park, of course. But they’d rather have a series advantage going home, too.

“We’ve got to talk about that,” Thomson said postgame, when the question became changing Kimbrel’s role to come. “Do you put him in a little lower-leverage spot? I don’t know. I’ll talk to him with [pitching coach] Caleb [Cotham], talk through it, and see where we’re at.” That was a far turn from Thomson’s pregame vote of confidence: “I trust [his bullpen]. Has [Kimbrel] scattered the zone at times? Sure. But if you look at our charts, everybody’s had a little bit of a hiccup, but they’ve bounced back. So you’ve got to trust that.”

Some social media mavens raised the name Mitch Williams, the zany and nerve-challenging Phillies lefthander who served up a World Series-losing home run to Joe Carter three decades ago. They thought the Wild Thing got too wild, too crazy, too reckless.

But it turned out that then-manager Jim Fregosi and then-pitching coach Johnny Podres forgot to tell Williams to back away from the slide-step—put on to keep Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson from as much of his usual basepath mischief as possible (a futile hope, of courae)—that altered and rushed his deliveries and his fastballs.

With Podres already having visited the mound, and neither he nor Fregosi finding a sign to send with the order, Williams was doomed when his slide-stepped fastball went into Carter’s wheelhouse instead of up and away where the Wild Thing wanted it and might have thrown it out of his normal delivery.

The three-legged mistake of Fregosi, Podres, and Williams lost the Phillies a World Series. Kimbrel’s high-wire mistake merely tied an NLCS game. “I rolled up in here and cost us two games,” said Kimbrel postgame, clearly not pleased with himself. “The bright side is we’re still tied at 2-2 and we’ve got a game here tomorrow, then we get to Philly.”

Forced to a bullpen Game Four in which the bulls ran short, Kimbrel ran out, and a few early defensive mistakes made life tougher for the Phillies than it should have been, they  need Zack Wheeler to pitch an even better Game Five Saturday than he did enabling the Phillies to win Game One.

They also need Aaron Nola to be his Game Two self in Game Six back home. Their bullpen, whose main men have worked 14.3 innings in this set, needs a huge break. They need to quit underestimating this tenacious crew of Diamondbacks, no matter how silly they’ve slapped Snakes starters Merrill Kelly and Zac Gallen, the latter of whom squares off against Wheeler on Saturday.

They can’t afford to risk Kimbrel tearing it even once more, either.

NLCS Game Three: Cardiac arrested

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Craig Kimbrel

“Some days you get them, and some days you don’t.”—Phillies relief pitcher Craig Kimbrel, gotten but good by the Diamondbacks in Game Three.

Two League Championship Series Game Threes, two postseason juggernauts stopped. One night, the Astros slap aging and rusted Max Scherzer silly en route making the ALCS a 2-1 affair. The next afternoon, the Diamondbacks do what Cardiac Craig Kimbrel all but begs them to do and turn the NLCS likewise into a 2-1 affair.

Until both the Phillies and the Diamondbacks more or less snuck single runs home in each half of the seventh, their Game Three was mostly a pitching clinic. In fact, until Diamondbacks reliever Ryan Thompson wild-pitched Bryce Harper home in the top of the seventh, no scoreless postseason game ever ended its scoreless status that way.

Both starters, Ranger Suárez for the Phillies and rookie Brandon Pfaadt for the Diamondbacks, pitched into the sixth without so much as a peep across the plate on either side.

The bullpens took over and, while a few things got a little dicey between them, they held the tie and threatened to send the game to extra innings. Then Phillies manager Rob Thomson made his big mistake. He called upon Kimbrel to hold fort for the bottom of the ninth.

If this game was in Philadelphia, even the Phillies’s loud and loyal fans would have had the crash carts on double red alert. But in Chase Field, the Diamondbacks’s snake pit, the only thing anyone on that crowd wanted to hand Kimbrel was a loaded triple-decker hamburger smothered in heavy sauce.

This was a little too classic Kimbrel. He fell behind Lourdes Gurriel, Jr. leading off, 3-0, pumped two strikes called on the corner, watched Gurriel foul a pair off, then walked him low and away.

He fell behind Pavin Smith, a late game entry pinch hitting for the day’s designated hitter Evan Longoria two innings earlier, 2-0, Gurriel stealing second on the second pitch.

Then, a swinging strike, followed by a grounder up the middle that Phillies third baseman Bryson Stott grabbed on a slide but left himself no play. With Gurriel the potential winning run now on third.

Next was Emmanuel Rivera, playing third for the Diamondbacks. Kimbrel got his first first-pitch strike of the assignment while Smith took second on fielders’ indifference. A foul strike, a ball low, then a grounder toward third speared by Phillies shortstop Trea Turner, who threw home and nailed Gurriel at the plate.

Back in Philadelphia, the sigh of relief probably crossed three state lines—but the crash carts remained online and on double red alert. With good reason.

Kimbrel started Snakes shortstop Geraldo Perdomo with a ball way off the plate before Perdomo fouled the next pitch away and swung for strike two. This was the first time Kimbrel got ahead of a batter in the inning. That’d teach him. Two straight balls, low, to follow. Ball four to load the pillows. A first pitch strike to second baseman Ketel Marte. A second pitch fastball a little up . . .

Bing! It wasn’t up enough for Marte to miss shooting it back up the pipe for a base hit sending Smith home with the game winner.

Yes, it was only Game Three. Yes, the Phillies still have the NLCS advantage. But, yes, they may have to think twice before deciding they can live with the cardiac side of Kimbrel much longer.

“He just couldn’t find the zone consistently,” said Phillies manager Rob Thomson postgame, “and sometimes that happens to Kim,” Thomson said. “But he’ll be available [for Gamr Four], and he’ll be ready to go.”

Hear me out. This guy has been a great pitcher in the past. Somehow, he still holds a lifetime 2.47 fielding-independent pitching rate (FIP), a 0.99 walks/hits per inning pitched rate, and a 3.87-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio, not to mention a 14.2 strikeouts-per-nine rate. But his real greatness may well be behind him, even if he was an All-Star in his first Phillies season this year.

Now, let’s look at Kimbrel by dividing his career between his final of three regular seasons with the Red Sox and his seasons since:

Craig Kimbrel ERA FIP WHIP BB/9 K/9 K/BB
2010-2018 1.80 1.81 0.91 3.3 14.8 4.44
2019-2023 3.57 3.68 1.16 4.1 13.0 3.15

Yes, he can still strike the other guys out like a virtuoso. But since leaving Boston he’s walking about one more per nine than before and striking one less out. He’s allowing more to reach base in the first place since leaving Boston. His ERA/FIP were about dead even during those great first nine seasons of his career, but they’re two runs higher since that 2010-2018 term. And, from 2019-23, his FIP (kind of your ERA when the defense behind you is taken out of the equation) is eleven points higher than his ERA.

Since somehow earning six saves despite a 6.74 ERA in the 2018 postseason, Kimbrel has been up and down in October. In 2020, he pitched an inning and a third shutdown relief in the National League wild card game for the Cubs. In 2021, he appeared in three American League division series for the White Sox—and surrendered two earned runs in three innings.

Until Thursday afternoon, Kimbrel this postseason looked great if you didn’t look past the surface numbers. In division series Game One he got the side in order to finish the Phillies’ win—without a strikeout. But he needed Johan Rojas’s spectacular running catch in division series Game Four’s seventh to save him in the Phillies’ win.

He got the NLCS Game One save credit with a swinging strikeout and a game-ending double play—after he walked his second batter of the ninth. Entering Game Three, Kimbrel had an ERA of zero . . . but a 3.71 FIP. But after Game Three, they became 2.09/5.07.

A 5.07 FIP is not conducive to late-inning survival.

“Some days you get them, and some days you don’t,” Kimbrel said, too matter-of-factly, after the game ended. “Today just wasn’t my day.”

Remember: It wasn’t Kimbrel’s fault the Phillies’ usually formidable offense was kept to three hits on the day, or scored their only run of the game on a walk, an infield hit, a double play pushing Harper to third, and the wild pitch enabling Harper to score. But given the chance to push Game Three to extras tied at one, Kimbrel went cardiac once too often.

That may not be a thrill or a chill the Phillies can afford much longer. If at all.

He’ll be available tomorrow, and he’ll be ready to go. Which “he’ll”—the guy who can be as tight shutdown as they come, or the guy who can’t stop the high wire act until the cable snaps under his feet? These Phillies deserve to know, because these Diamondbacks won’t be kind if the wrong one’s ready.