Time for 2023 Phillies' favorite infuriating hobby: rebounding from gut-punch

For most teams, a defeat like the one the Philadelphia Phillies suffered in Game 2 of the NLDS would be a knockout blow.

Sure, their best-of-five series is merely tied 1-1 after the Phillies lost to the Braves by a 5-4 final score on Monday night, and by virtue their Game 1 win on Saturday, they’ve stolen home field advantage from Atlanta before heading back to Philadelphia for the next two. But it’s not that they lost Game 2 — it’s the way that they lost that makes recovery from it so difficult.

The Phillies, in short, had the Braves on the ropes.

For the first 14 innings of the series, the best offense in baseball couldn’t manage a single run, with Zack Wheeler leading the way Monday and tying a franchise record for strikeouts in a playoff game (10) in the process. Atlanta starter Max Fried was a shell of himself in his first appearance since September 21, trying and failing to get by mostly on curveballs and guile. And the Braves were making the kinds of mistakes that teams on their last legs make. They walked the notoriously free-swinging Nick Castellanos (total BBs during the season: 36). They walked Cristian Pache, the weakest hitter in the Philadelphia lineup. And then, they somehow allowed him to steal second, because it didn’t register with Ozzie Albies that Pache might miss the bag on his initial slide by a good three feet.

Atlanta seemed disarmed by the Phillies’ unique brand of chaos, and for the vast majority of this game, the road team looked poised to cruise.

But slowly and surely, the mistakes started to pile up. The Phillies left at least one runner on base in each of the first seven innings, adding up to 11 in total. They managed to dent the Braves bullpen for just one run in five innings after chasing Fried. An uncharacteristic error by Trea Turner fielding a relay throw handed Atlanta their first run of the series in the sixth, reminding them that Philadelphia pitching was not untouchable. Manager Rob Thomson left Wheeler in too long in the seventh, giving Travis d’Arnaud the opportunity to cut the deficit to 4-3 with a two-run shot even after he had already let Matt Olson rip a hit to kick off the inning.

And then, of course, there were the “what if” moments of the eighth and ninth innings — Jeff Hoffman came within one strike of getting out of the jam that would ultimately lead to the Braves’ first lead of the series, courtesy of a one-handed Austin Riley HR, and Castellanos’ blast to right field in the ninth came just a few feet from handing the Phillies back the lead once more. Instead, Michael Harris II made a highlight-reel grab into the wall, and with the help of Riley, took advantage of Bryce Harper’s baserunning aggressiveness to double him up before he got back to first. End of game.

Now, if momentum does truly exist, it’s almost certainly with the Braves. Yes, the Phillies now have home-field advantage, with two of the final three games of the series slated to be played at Citizens Bank Park. But the Braves were four outs away from being dead, needing to win both games in Philadelphia just for the opportunity to get shut down once more by Wheeler back home. Now, they head north with the knowledge that their offense is rolling again, and that they’ll have ace Spencer Strider back available for Game 4 on four days rest. Their confidence likely is through the roof.

And why wouldn’t it be? There’s a reason the Braves entered this series as the clear-cut favorite. They won 104 games in 2023. They finished as the best offense in baseball by 41 runs, and posted the best run differential by 24. For whatever reason, the Braves looked asleep for the first 14 innings of the NLDS. Now, they must be wide awake. For pretty much any other team, a revitalized Braves would be too much to handle, especially after the kind of gut-punch loss the Phillies just suffered.

And maybe it will be. But keep one thing in mind: this particular Phillies team has made a sport out of losing games in the most heartbreaking fashion possible, and then picking themselves up off the mat. They’ve done it all year long.

Remember September 12, when they erased a 6-1 deficit over the final three innings and tied it in the ninth with a Turner bomb just to lose it in ten? Or the day before, when a Harper homer in the ninth was nullified by another 10th inning falter? Or September 1, when they exploded for four runs in the eighth to turn a 3-1 deficit into a 5-3 edge… only to allow four runs of their own in the bottom half of the inning after Alec Bohm let a playable grounder slip between his legs? Or when Harper tied two games in the ninth inning seven days apart with dramatic home runs at the end of August, and the Phillies lost both of them anyway?

It’s just what this Phillies team does. Their penchant for drama cuts both ways — they erase deficits and pull off monumental upsets, and then make mind-numbing mistakes and give away easily winnable contests — sometimes in the very same game. They win a lot more than they lose, but when they do lose, it tends to be in gut-punch fashion.

And then, somehow, they shake it off.

Cal it resiliency, call it good managing, call it being too stubbornly dense to realize that these types of losses should stick in their minds. But for whatever reason, all season long, they haven’t let bad losses crush them, often coming right back the next day and nabbing a redemption victory.

This will, of course, be their toughest test yet, against the best team in baseball (on paper). But they’ll have the power of the CBP faithful behind them on Wednesday and Thursday. They’ll have the starting pitching advantage in Game 3, assuming Nola extends his streak of three straight strong starts to four. And if they can snatch a win on Wednesday, they’re looking at one more home game to finish it off, and then Wheeler back on the mound on Saturday in Atlanta if they can’t.

It’s still doable. And while most teams would crumble after a loss as devastating as Game 2, the 2023 Phillies aren’t most teams.

Now, we see if they can prove that to be true one more time.