Duel, Interrupted: Phillies Come Back To Beat Braves Late, Even Series
On September 6 and then again on September 12, Tyler Mahle squared off with the Phillies. Both times, he left them frustrated and flailing; he allowed three runs across 13 innings in two Atlanta victories. In each of those games, Mahle leaned on his splitter quite a bit, something he’s done more frequently since joining the Braves at the trade deadline. That set up an interesting mind game in Wednesday’s Game 2. Seeing the same opponent for the third time in a month, would Mahle change his ways? Would the Phillies change their own approach? And could they overcome the Braves, who had been their nemeses throughout the year, and prolong their season for another day with their Kryptonite on the mound?
Mahle’s splitter was devastating last outing, so clearly the Phillies would have to sit on it. But wait! Mahle knows that the Phillies know that they won’t beat his splitter unless they key on it. So clearly, he should throw them fewer splitters. But wait! The Phillies know that Mahle knows that they will probably be sitting on the splitter. So clearly, they can’t look for splitters. But wait! Mahle knows that the Phillies know that… Well, you get the idea. There are levels to this, to paraphrase Kendrick Lamar.
Or maybe not. The Phillies either went too many levels up, or they didn’t even get into the endless iocaine powder reasoning loop I just described. Because Mahle came out leaning on his splitter, just as you’d expect, and the Phillies came out with absolutely no solutions. As Arthur C. Clarke said, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And to Philadelphia, Mahle’s splitter might as well have been Power Word: Whiff. They surely knew it was coming – it just didn’t matter.
Mahle threw a frankly shocking number of splits right from the start. He threw 10 of them in the first inning. Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber saw only splitters. The other Philadelphia lefties saw more splitters than fastballs. And while the Phillies managed to plate a run after Trea Turner punched a double to right field to lead off the game, they never looked particularly close to either laying off Mahle’s best offering or even getting a bat on it.
As the game wore on, Mahle didn’t change his approach, and neither did the Phillies. Schwarber waved over two splitters to strike out in the third. Harper followed by tapping a splitter below the zone for a weak groundout. After a blank trip through the order, Schwarber lunged over yet another splitter for yet another strikeout in the top of the fifth. This time, Harper followed with a fruitless two-strike hack at a splitter that nearly bounced. While the Phillies scattered a few two-out baserunners, they never put much pressure on Mahle; he simply pulled out more splitters whenever he was in trouble, and the jam vanished into thin air.
All told, Mahle threw 55 splitters out of his 95 pitches. The Phillies swung at 35 of them and whiffed 13 times. Mahel’s previous career high in splitter whiffs? Nine. Philly also managed to take six splitters for strikes, tying a career high (he also tied this career high in one of his September starts against them). When they did make contact, they mostly beat it into the ground or fouled it off. They managed exactly three pieces of elevated contact against Mahle’s best pitch: a can of corn and two soft liners, all caught uneventfully.
Add it all up, and Mahle turned in a masterpiece of a start: seven innings, six strikeouts, and one run allowed to the first batter he faced all game. It was one of his best starts all year, right up there with – well, right up there with the last time he faced the Phillies, three weeks ago. It was the best outcome the Braves could have hoped for. They surely would have accepted either good length or good run prevention, and instead, they got both.
Most days, laying an offensive egg like that would doom the visitors. But this wasn’t most days; the Phillies had Cristopher Sánchez, one of the best pitchers in baseball, to oppose Mahle. Sánchez, too, had a first-inning hiccup. He walked Ronald Acuña Jr., and Acuña promptly stole second and third before coming home on a Matt Olson single. But to keep the wizardly metaphors going, Sánchez stood bravely on the mound and said “You shall not pass” to the entire Braves offense.
Sánchez’s effectiveness wasn’t as notable as Mahle’s — like I said, he’s one of the best pitchers in baseball, despite an uneven September. When he’s locating well, he’s a nightmare matchup for any hitter, and he looked sharp for most of the day. He kept his sinker down and tantalized righties with his excellent changeup, piling up double-digit whiffs of his own with it. The Braves threatened only intermittently, but they struggled to string hits together or do much damage, which is a pretty normal way for Sánchez to dominate. He recorded 20 outs in this game, and 16 came on grounders or strikeouts.
If you’re doing math at home, you might realize that 20 outs isn’t a round number of innings. That’s because the Phillies, working with a depleted bullpen after yesterday’s game, pushed Sánchez as far as they could in an attempt to lessen the load on the rest of their pitchers. He threw 91 pitches through six, and then started the seventh with a six-pitch walk to Sean Murphy. Ha-Seong Kim, the next batter, dropped down a sacrifice bunt, a gift for Philly given the team’s goal of shortening the game, but first baseman Alec Bohm misread the situation. He tried to make a spectacular play to get the lead-footed Murphy at second, but simply didn’t have the time or the angle, and instead recorded no outs on a gimme.
Sánchez recovered to strike out Acuña for the second time in the game, but the defensive miscues weren’t over. Drake Baldwin, the next batter, lofted a medium-hit fly ball to right field. Harper, who switched from first base to right field after the trade deadline and isn’t a good defender out there even in the best of times, misread the play disastrously. He didn’t get turned around in time, lost the ball in the air, tried to make a twisting leap at the last second, and came up a few inches short on what should have been an easy out. The Braves took the lead, then tacked on another run when Olson squared up a sinker for a sacrifice fly. Sánchez departed having thrown 116 pitches, a career high, and with neither defensive miscue recorded as an error, he “allowed” three earned runs.
Nevertheless, Sánchez’s Herculean effort kept Philly in the game long enough to get that accursed Mahle off the mound. I can’t prove it, but if Mahle had pitched 100 innings, I’m not sure the Phillies would have scored again. The Atlanta bullpen was good this year, but did you read my recap of the first seven innings? And even better, the Phillies had Schwarber and Harper due up, which meant the Braves went to Dylan Lee. Lee was great overall this season, but some pitch tipping concerns and a huge workload meant the Braves didn’t use him much in September, and he struggled when he did pitch.
Foreshadowing sufficiently achieved? Great! Schwarber greeted Lee with a titanic blast, 447 feet to right field, the kind of home run that you can hear as much from the stunned silence of the home crowd as from the crack of the bat. Acuña didn’t so much as turn around – there was just no doubt. And before the murmuring had settled, Harper followed with a smash of his own, another no-doubter to right. Just like that, it was a whole new ballgame, with Philly’s anemic gameplan against Mahle and lackadaisical defense forgotten.
By the time Atlanta restored order with Raisel Iglesias and Didier Fuentes, extra innings seemed all but guaranteed. By this point, the shadows were lengthening, giving hitters a nightmarish sun-to-shade look at incoming pitches. The Phillies turned to Andrew Painter for length, and after some initial control issues, he settled in and turned in two straight scoreless innings.
Perhaps today was opposite day. The Phillies seemed to have a clear edge in starting pitching – Cy Young candidate against journeyman – but Mahle out-dueled Sánchez. The Braves seemed to have a clear edge in relief pitching – they have a better bullpen to start with, and Jhoan Duran wasn’t available for Philadelphia after yesterday’s long outing. But Iglesias didn’t look sharp, and Walt Weiss didn’t let him face the top of the order with a runner on in the ninth, turning to Fuentes for the last out of the frame. He got that key batter before starting the 10th with two quick outs, but then he tried to get a fastball in on Bohm’s hands, and Bohm was ready for it. He got his arms in and punched the ball juuuuust over the fence in right for a tie-breaking, extra-innings solo shot.
Painter was in the game for the duration, with a completely empty bullpen behind him. He allowed a one-out single to Mauricio Dubón to put the pressure on, and those helpful shadows were no longer quite so beneficial; the lowering sun put the mound and the plate in the same lighting conditions. After Austin Riley struck out, Michael Harris II flipped a Texas Leaguer to left to put two on with two out. That brought pinch-hitter Dominic Smith to the plate with the tying run in scoring position. But the day held no more surprises. Painter poured in two changeups to get ahead 0-2, then threw a low fastball that Smith took. It was called a ball, but it wasn’t, and J.T. Realmuto challenged immediately, for a game-ending ABS overturn. Cross that one off your bingo card.
The Braves will be kicking themselves for failing to close this one out. It’s hard to imagine a start going much better than Mahle’s did. Atlanta brought a multi-run lead into the eighth inning with four high-leverage relievers available. Philly’s defense misfired to help the Braves’ cause. They got three innings worth of Painter and couldn’t scrape together anything against him. Now the Braves will have to win a do-or-die game with Duran back, their own bullpen tired, and Zack Wheeler likely to pitch. Mahle’s colossal effort was the best individual performance of the day. But despite their atrocious gameplan, the Philly hitters persevered, got into the bullpen, and won the day. I can’t wait for the decider in what’s already been a highly entertaining series.