Astros Back Phillies Into Corner, Watch Phillies Kiss Her, as Realmuto Homers to Win Game 1

Through the first three rounds of the playoffs, two competing storylines took shape: The Astros, indomitable, sheared through the American League undefeated. The Phillies, resilient, ebullient, and unpredictable, shocked the National League by dominating the senior circuit’s best.

When these two narratives finally intersected in Houston Friday night, spraying hits and disorder all over the field like debris from a train crash, the result was an instant classic. The Astros dominated early, staking out an early five-run lead that by all rights ought to have demoralized their opposition. But the Phillies, a $255 million monument to not knowing when you’re beaten, struck right back for a historic comeback win:

How historic? The Phillies’ 6-5 win was the biggest comeback by an NL team in the World Series since 1956. When Houston’s win probability peaked with one out in the top of the fourth, they were roughly 16-to-1 favorites to win the game. Instead, the Phillies erased that lead in two innings, hung around long enough for J.T. Realmuto to win the game in the top of the 10th, and survived a Houston rally that came within 180 feet of turning a series-changing Phillies win into a crushing loss.

A slew of singles and a pair of Kyle Tucker home runs was good enough to build a 5-0 lead in the third. Minute Maid Park was rocking, Aaron Nola was sweating like Albert Brooks in Broadcast News, and Justin Verlander was cruising. But sure enough, the Phillies — just as they have all postseason — counterpunched, and by the end of the fifth inning, the game was tied. The Astros don’t get knocked down, but the Phillies don’t get knocked out.

Tucker, the 25-year-old who debuted nine months after the Astros won their last title, jumped out of the gate set to author a signature moment for himself. In open defiance of the Phillies’ #RedOctober hashtag, Tucker took Nola deep not once but twice. The first, a solo home run on an absolute meatball of a change-up, opened the scoring. The second was a sinker at the end of a seven-pitch at-bat, scoring three. A one- or two-run lead isn’t safe, but five runs?

Verlander, who retired the first 10 batters he faced before running afoul of the middle of the Phillies order with two outs in the fourth, remains winless in eight career World Series starts. (Of all the many things in baseball I do not understand, Verlander’s World Series bugbear is one of the things I understand least.)

Sure enough, Verlander turned back into a human being the instant the Astros built an insurmountable-looking lead. With two on, two out, and a 1-2 count in the top of the fourth, Nick Castellanos flicked a slider off his shoelaces and into left field to score Rhys Hoskins. Then Alec Bohm doubled the next pitch off the cutout in left field to cut the lead to 5-3. An inning later, Realmuto doubled in two more runs off Verlander, who after throwing 30 pitches in the fourth was losing command of his fastball.

The ensuing four innings were a tense, exquisitely pitched, but ultimately unproductive stalemate. Having watched his team snatch parity from the jaws of defeat, manager Rob Thomson committed his bullpen totally to stealing Game 1. Specifically, he threw everything he had at containing Houston’s two most dangerous left-handed hitters. He knew, having watched Tucker beat his starter twice and just being generally aware of Yordan Alvarez’s body of work, where the danger lay. José Alvarado relieved Nola in the fifth, and presumptive Game 3 starter Ranger Suárez — a reliever until midway through 2021 — tackled Alvarez and Tucker the next time through. (Tucker, having the night of his life, lined a 1-2 fastball through the right side in the bottom of the eighth.)

Each team had one good opportunity to score before the end of regulation. Bryan Abreu, who threw as dominant an inning as you’ll ever see in the top of the sixth, tired quickly in his second inning of work, compounding a Kyle Schwarber infield single by walking Realmuto and Bryce Harper to load the bases. But despite the Phillies’ patience — and Schwarber’s taco-winning basestealing — former Phillie Héctor Neris retired Castellanos to preserve the tie.

And after getting nothing out of a two-baserunner inning in the sixth, the Astros nearly walked it off against Seranthony Domínguez in the bottom of the ninth. Jose Altuve dropped a popup in front of Brandon Marsh, then stole second by the closest margin you’ll ever see. Then Jeremy Peña, who’d nearly dropped an inning-ending pop-up half an inning before, poked what looked for sure like the game-winning single into short right field, until a charging Castellanos slid under it to retire the side — nearly a carbon copy of his game-saving catch against Atlanta in Game 1 of the NLDS:

The hit that clinched it was barely more than yet another popup. Realmuto, who carried the Phillies to the postseason in the first place, drove in the tying run, and took a jaw-rattling foul tip off the mask earlier in the game, was the one to deliver. He saw six fastballs of various types from Luis Garcia, a pitcher he’d never faced before. All were some kind of low and away, but the last one was just on the outside corner, close enough for Realmuto to poke it over the short right field wall. Tucker, it bears mentioning, came up about three feet short of snatching the ball out of the air and relegating his two home runs to below-the-fold news. Such are the margins in postseason baseball:

If we needed further reminders of that, David Robertson provided them in the bottom of the inning. Thomson’s aggressive bullpen management not only kept the Phillies in the game against a superior pitching staff, it likely kept all of his best relievers available for Game 2, and got Suárez out of the game after only 11 pitches, keeping him in line to start Game 3 as planned.

But it also meant Thomson had to go off the board to close the game. Robertson’s only previous World Series experience came against the Phillies in 2009, and since then he’s battled through injuries and ineffectiveness, and would not be the first choice if Eflin, Alvarado, and Domínguez had not already been used.

Moreover, he’d have to face the very section of the Astros lineup Thomson had been managing around all night: Alvarez, Alex Bregman, and Tucker. It went the opposite of how you’d expect. The two lefties Robertson dispatched fairly easily with a barrage of downright belligerent knuckle-curveballs. But in between, things got hairy. Bregman doubled off the face of the Crawford Boxes, Yuli Gurriel worked his first walk of the postseason, and a wild pitch put both the tying and winning runs in scoring position just as Robertson’s command was starting to fade.

But even though pinch hitter Aledmys Díaz worked a three-ball count and tried like hell to get hit by a pitch — he did, in fact, wear one, but was called back home for not only leaning but stepping into the ball — he finally gave up the ghost. A 3-1 slider, Robertson’s seventh consecutive breaking ball, got tapped to Edmundo Sosa to end a game that used of every inch of runway it had, and tickled or frayed every nerve of the nationwide viewing audience.

This, well, the Phillies hadn’t quite had to do this yet in the postseason. But the comeback, the persistent offense, the skin-of-their teeth defense, and the flawless high-leverage pitching from Alvarado and Domínguez — all of that is all too familiar. It’s what they’ve done more or less every game for a month.

In that time, the Astros have rolled through every opponent, even threatening ones, thanks to the bullpen or Alvarez’s bat or the irrepressible sequential offense that has defined the franchise since 2015. Those qualities have saved the Astros from something they’re experiencing now for the first time: Adversity. Loss of the initiative. Not insurmountable odds by any means, as ZiPS still has them at 41.1% to win the series. But now they’ve lost a game they absolutely should have won, and the next four won’t be any easier: Zack Wheeler, the hottest starter on Earth, is up next, followed by three in Philadelphia, where the Phillies are 5-0 this postseason.

Five years ago, I was present at another World Series game that began with dominance from Verlander and ended in a thrilling, chaotic victory for the visiting team. I wrote then that the Dodgers, who’d won the first game of the series and had the Astros dead to rights in Game 2, would come to regret giving a resilient opponent a chance to slug its way back to life. The Astros will hope they haven’t just made the same mistake.