San Diego Wobbles But Doesn’t Fall Down in NLCS Game 2 Clash

Stop for a minute. Take a breath. You’re great. Everything will be fine. If I were Blake Snell, that’s what I’d have been telling myself six batters into the second inning Wednesday. Snell came out firing, garnering empty swings and weak contact left and right. The first three batters of the inning produced two flares and a line drive single. After a steadying strikeout, though, this happened:

You can’t control the sun, but that one stings. That ball is as close to a sure out as you can get, and instead it fueled the Philadelphia rally. The next batter, Edmundo Sosa, flipped another flare to left to make it 3-0. Snell was pitching extremely well, and staring down three runs and two more runners on base. The game threatened to get out of hand quickly.

Snell recovered admirably. He induced a grounder that could easily have been a double play to Kyle Schwarber, the next batter, then retired 10 of the next 11 batters he faced, with a walk to Schwarber the sole blemish. He was, in fact, masterful: he struck out six Phillies while only walking one, and every last hit against him was in that flare-and-sun-laden second inning. It takes mental fortitude to watch everything around you crumble and maintain your edge through it, and Snell had it today.<!-

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Stop for a minute. Take a breath. You’re great. Everything will be fine. Juan Soto was having a horrible day, a horrible postseason really. He came into Game 2 with a .226/.294/.258 playoff line, grounded into the shift in the first and third innings, and had that abysmal outfield gaffe in addition to a throwing error earlier in the inning that ended up not mattering.

He had a chance to make everything right. He stepped to the plate with runners on first and third and one out in the bottom of the fifth. The Padres trailed by one. Hit another of those grounders, and they’d leave the inning trailing. The recent trend was bad, and the opposition was fierce: Aaron Nola has been one of the best pitchers in baseball this October, and he carved the corners against Soto:

That’s a spectacular pitch sequence. The first pitch was a perfect changeup, the second a fizzing curveball that dotted the outside corner as Soto swung fruitlessly past it. The third was a painted sinker, 95 on the black, some of Nola’s best velocity of the season and with his customary perfect location. Soto obliterated it; he lasered it off the wall in right field, with so much velocity that the trail runner was forced to stop at third. Tie ballgame, weight of the world off of Soto’s shoulders.

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Stop for a minute. Take a breath. You’re great. Everything will be fine. Nola hadn’t allowed a run in his first two starts of the playoffs, and he’d been staked to a 4-0 lead in the second inning. That’s a recipe for an easy win, but things didn’t play out that way. Brandon Drury and Josh Bell socked back-to-back dingers in the second. Nola righted the ship, but the fifth inning had been an avalanche of blows. These weren’t ticky-tack flares; Ha-Seong Kim torched a single, Soto’s double was smashed, and the only out of the inning so far had been a 380-foot fly ball to dead center.

Worse news: Manny Machado was stepping to the plate to a cascade of “M-V-P!” chants. Machado has been San Diego’s beating heart all year, and he’d already clobbered a double in the first. This was put up or shut up time for Nola. No safety net, no margin for error, even a groundball would likely un-tie the game; it was time to muscle up and strike Machado out.

Nola rose to the occasion with his signature pinpoint command. He peppered the outside corner with precision cutters that Machado couldn’t square up. The cutter is a new pitch for Nola, and he uses it sparingly; he only threw two all game. After getting ahead with a cutter (fouled off) and a four-seam fastball (fouled off), Nola dangled the bait yet again. Machado couldn’t contain himself; he swung past a cutter off the plate away. Two outs, the biggest threat dealt with. Nola had bounced back from his moment of stress admirably.

The embers of the San Diego rally still smoldered. With runners on second and third and two outs, Jake Cronenworth was next up, and Philadelphia manager Rob Thomson replaced Nola. He wanted to play the platoon game, bringing in a lefty to neutralize Cronenworth and pour a canister of water on those dangerous embers.

Unfortunately for Thomson, he accidentally grabbed kerosene. Brad Hand was the first man out of the bullpen, and while he’s theoretically best suited for high leverage spots against left-handed batters, he’s hardly a command artist. Cronenworth worked the count to 2-2, unwilling to chase a bouncing slider, and Hand promptly put a fastball into the middle of his back, loading the bases.

That meant trouble, because the San Diego lineup turns from lefty-friendly to unforgiving gauntlet in an instant. Drury was next to the plate, and a nightmare matchup for the Phillies. He’s on the Padres specifically to hit left-handed pitching, and Hand’s sweeping slider is a particularly juicy target for righties. After working the count to 3-2, Drury dumped a slider into center for a 6-4 lead, sweet revenge for the Phillies’ earlier cavalcade of soft liners.

Bell followed with his first righty at-bat of the game and smoked a single down the right-field line, hit so hard that he lost track of the ball and sat in the box wonderingly for a brief moment, perhaps thinking he’d fouled it off. In a heartbeat, it was 7-4, and Thomson was back out of the dugout to take the ball out of Hand’s hands. Andrew Bellatti finally retired Trent Grisham to end the threat, but the Padres had undone two games of poor offense in a single inning.

From there, the writing was on the wall. Machado thrilled the crowd with a tattooed home run, comfortably clearing the power alley in left center. Rhys Hoskins countered with a missile of his own, a towering shot towards the warehouse in left. Inevitably, though, the game ground towards its conclusion: Josh Hader facing the Phillies with a three-run lead and a tied series on the line.

Hader has had ups and downs this year, but today he was on the upswing. He was flat out unhittable; the Phillies missed on half of their swings against him, and the four times they made contact were weak foul balls. As usual, he painted the top of the strike zone and lured hitters into challenging him, now with added oomph thanks to the adrenaline of the postseason. As Joe Davis noted on the broadcast, Hader had never touched 100 mph before this October. He’s now done it seven times, and he averaged 99 on the day, turning an already-spectacular pitch into something altogether otherworldly. Poor Matt Vierling produced three of those foul balls with a defensive approach, hoping to prolong the game with two outs. Hader showed no mercy; he snapped off a 93 mph changeup, a pitch he rarely uses, to end things.

Today, Brandon Drury and Josh Bell are heroes in San Diego. They delivered five RBI to spearhead a team effort. Their fellow deadline acquirees contributed too; Soto’s double fanned the flames in the fifth and Hader struck out the only three batters he faced. As the series shifts to Philadelphia, the Phillies will lament what could have been, and the Padres are surely sighing in relief. The second inning could have been a disaster, but they stopped for a minute, took a deep breath, and pushed on.