There are so many plucky Teams of Destiny in this year's playoffs that it's hard to pick just one to win the World Series off the back of narrative power. But the San Diego Padres have one too many legitimately good players to qualify, and the Detroit Tigers lost their first game of the Division Series, so the odds, depending on how you're counting, might favor the alternately Francisco Lindor- and "OMG"-powered New York Mets.
It is never a detriment to be the overdog in a series, but a favored team will never have the whimsy inherent to a team that should be losing. The core of the Philadelphia Phillies this year remains the same core that fueled the himbo-led, "Oh dear God, please would you stop blogging about the" Phillies of 2022 and 2023; going down the rosters of each year reveals no real pivotal trades or signings that would explain in baseball terms how the atmosphere around the Phillies has changed so drastically. And yet the Phillies started out this year as the best team in baseball and ended the year not so far off the mark. Any reasonable fan would rather have a team like that over a team that pluckily plucks its way into the playoffs every so often. But something—even if just the illusion of zen—is lost in trading magic for expectation. There's no danger of collapse for the team that is just having fun out there, and no freedom from that danger for the team whose whole season will count as a failure if it doesn't advance.
Through one game and six-and-a-half innings against the Mets, the Phillies were collapsing. It was a page straight out of the Los Angeles Dodgers' first-round playbook: Some impressive defensive showing couldn't make up for the bats freezing up. The Phillies' best arms couldn't buy an out on a two-strike count. New York's Luis Severino had somehow reached the pitch-count portion of the night, where a bullpen collapse seemed like the Phillies' only hope.
In a five-game series, losing the first two at home is death sentence. It's the treacherous, infuriating thing about baseball playoffs: No meaningful amount of management or team-building philosophy will fix a problem or suite of problems like that; all of the players simply have to be better, whatever that means. If you're very, very fortunate, that happens in real time.
Not that it was smooth sailing after Bryce Harper opened the Phillies scoring in the bottom of the sixth by hammering a middle-middle Severino fastball. Nor even when Nick Castellanos immediately followed that up by smashing his own home run to tie the game. The Phillies bullpen continued getting nothing out of two-strike counts, and the game seesawed between Mets home runs and production from the middle of the Phillies lineup. Matt Strahm couldn't manage the save for the Phils. In the ninth, Mets third baseman Mark Vientos, one of the rarefied players who has a higher year-end rWAR than career rWAR, hit his second home run of the game to tie the score.
For all the talk about Philly sports fandom's, ah, passion, even the nauseating back-and-forth of Sunday afternoon's game remained calmer, fan-wise, than whatever the hell went on in Los Angeles. Pete Alonso got booed when he came up to bat, but other than that, much of the attention was directed inward. Castellanos, who was simply not very good for much of the year, took two unfortunate swings in the fourth inning against Severino; when he finally took a pitch way down under the zone, he received a round of sarcastic applause. Lip readers caught Castellanos muttering to himself, "You fucking people." If Alec Bohm, unfortunately benched for this game but still in all of our hearts, is any indication, Castellanos would be all right.
Castellanos has been the most pivotal hitter in the Phillies lineup this postseason. This is neither an exaggeration of, nor a particular credit to, his power or clutch ability, though he has his moments in both. He earns that title purely by being the guy who bats behind Bryce Harper. Like any sensible team, the Mets do not want to pitch to Harper. Harper himself provided a handy demonstration of the risks inherent to the task with his sixth-inning homer. Lesson learned. Out of the 48 pitches that Harper's seen this postseason, only 13, or just over a quarter, have been in the zone. The way to deal with Harper has been, as the FOX commentary box described it, the old unintentional intentional walk; correspondingly, the burden of the at-bat shifts to the guy behind him.
With two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, Mets pitcher Tylor Megill threw seven pitches to Harper, only one of them in the zone. Harper worked a full count, and had one of the takes of his life on a 3-2 splitter in order to bring Castellanos up to bat. It's silly to aver that the subsequent Castellanos walk-off single was inevitable or, say, destined, but it did make sense, in a very Philly sort of calculus: Of course after getting booed, Castellanos would lock in and go 3-for-3. Of course he'd hit a home run. Of course he'd walk off a crucial, up-and-down game for the Phillies.
It remains unclear to what degree being a bit of an asshole can pass as charming in sports, but when facing whimsy, you have to dig out some magic of your own, wherever you can find it. Castellanos is something of a relic from the Phillies' previous years: badgered, often unsuccessful, a very "I don't have a college degree. I hit baseballs" bearing. If the Phillies are looking for something outside of that expectation, well, Castellanos would be the most pivotal hitter in the lineup no matter where he hit. Just look at the on-field interview Castellanos gave after the game, when he was asked what was going through his mind during his walk-off at bat.
"Honestly, nothing really," Castellanos said. Now that's what we're looking for.
