PHILADELPHIA – It takes some doing in this town to break through the Kelly Green throwbacks celebrating Reggie White and Randall Cunningham, or the midnight shade paying tribute to the current band of undefeated Eagles. Philadelphia can be alternately maniacal or misty-eyed about its heroes, their replica jerseys just as easily soused with beer or exactly curated from Mitchell & Ness.
These Philadelphia Phillies are well on their way to exalted status.
An unforeseen October run, with 10 pulsating victories in 13 games, has added red and blue accents to these late October days. Tributes to Bryce Harper and JT Realmuto and Rhys Hoskins hang from banners around town, the façade of City Hall draped in tribute. The players unanimously feel the support, most notably from the perhaps unparalleled frenzy at Citizens Bank Park, where the underdog Phillies have returned home and closed out the Atlanta Braves and San Diego Padres, five straight victories sending the better-seeded team home.
Monday night, though, the dynamic changes a bit.
The Phillies and Houston Astros are tied 1-1 in this 118th World Series, with Games 3, 4 and 5 to come the next three nights. And for the first time in these playoffs, Philadelphia feels at a significant disadvantage.
GAME 2: Astros strike back to even 2022 World Series
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They stole Game 1 of this series but burned aces Aaron Nola and Zack Wheeler in Houston. Games 4 and 5 will be manned by right-hander Noah Syndergaard – who manager Rob Thomson acknowledges will do well to complete three innings – and beloved lefty Ranger Suarez, who was forced to pitch in relief in Game 1.
Houston counters with veteran playoff hero Lance McCullers Jr. and dominant Cristian Valdez. With Jose Altuve back on the beam, the entire lineup is humming. The Astros have won eight of their nine playoff games.
So, it’s not just that the Phillies will appreciate the vicious roar of 45,000 fans converging in South Philly. At this point, they need it.
“I think Philly’s coming,” says right fielder Nick Castellanos of the club’s plight. “I think we’re coming. I think the whole city is coming with us. The World Series is back at Citizens Bank.
“What more could anybody want?”
They are certainly getting a compelling Fall Classic.
Bring it on
What a weird World Series: The Houston Astros have held 5-0 leads in each game, yet Philadelphia’s powerful, athletic lineup never feels out of reach. In Game 1, the Phillies erased all of that deficit and won in 10 innings. In Game 2, they nearly got the tying run to the plate in the bottom of the ninth and were stymied by two Kyle Schwarber two-run home runs that weren’t, the first a fly that narrowly went foul and another that died at the warning track.
So the Astros have been about as dominant as imagined, the Phillies as stubborn as we knew. Yet the Series has reached a fascinating pivot point, one where the Astros seem to enjoy a significant personnel edge.
They’re also going into a veritable postseason cauldron.
It’s the place Hoskins spiked his bat and shattered the season of the defending champion Braves. Where Realmuto sprinted home and made history as the first catcher to hit an inside-the-park home run. Where the Phillies gave up four first-inning runs to the Padres in NLCS Game 4 – only to score three of their own in the bottom half and eight in the first five innings.
Where, a game later, Harper drove a pitch to the opposite field to end the NLCS right there in the eighth inning of Game 5.
Perhaps the fans had very little to do with any of that. The Astros are ready to find out.
“Really looking forward to experiencing the crowd,” insists Game 3 starter McCullers. “I’ve heard a lot about it. So I’ve been pretty open. I’m a really big fan of the game and I think it will be a great moment. I’m looking forward to trying to pitch us to a win.
“You get to really test yourself and kind of see what you’re made of when you have to go on the road, especially in a big Game 3 like we’re going to have.”
McCullers knows tests, pitching the final four innings to secure a save in Game 7 of the 2017 ALCS, and getting the start in Game 7 of that World Series. The Astros have returned to the World Series twice since, but McCullers has not.
He was recovering from Tommy John surgery in 2019 when the Astros lost in seven games to the Washington Nationals and last year was knocked out by a flexor tendon injury suffered in the ALDS. Houston lost to Atlanta in six games, and McCullers did not pitch again until this August.
But he pitched six shutout innings in the clinching Game 3 of this year’s ALDS at Seattle, which Houston eventually won in 18 innings. And he started the clinching ALCS Game 4 at Yankee Stadium this season.
“That was a very devastating day,” Astros manager Dusty Baker says of when the Astros learned last year McCullers was injured. “A down day when he came in and said, ‘Hey, man, I think something’s wrong and I don’t think I can pitch.’
“We still had good pitching, but Lance has been our big-game guy. So I’m just glad to have him back and have him for this series.”
He will be opposed by Syndergaard, who started and won Game 3 of the 2015 World Series with the Mets, but has not thrown more than 35 pitches since Oct. 1.
The Astros’ Javier tossed 5 ⅓ shutout innings in Game 3 of the ALCS at Yankee Stadium. Purely from a recency standpoint, the Phillies will be playing uphill the next couple of games.
How to make up the gap?
‘It’s about the crowd, right?’
McCullers is not untouchable, by any means. With a beguiling slider and curveball, he excels at keeping batters off balance and posted a 2.27 ERA in his eight regular season starts this year. But he does allow traffic: 10 baserunners in five innings against the Yankees, and a 1.24 WHIP during the regular season.
The Phillies hope any traffic on the Citizens Bank Park basepaths will be accompanied by an airport runway worth of noise.
“It’s about the crowd, right?” says Hoskins. “You’ve seen in some of these games that we’ll get a big hit and it just snowballs from there. As the home team, you can lean on that. Stuff’s not going our way, throughout a game, the energy has still been there, the noise has still been there. So that’s another thing we can lean on.
“But, in terms of their arms, of course they’re good. They’re here for a reason. We’re confident in the guys that we’re throwing, too. We’ve been able to swing the bats well at home too, so we’ll see how that goes.”
It’s been a perfect formula so far: The Phillies have won Game 1 on the road in every series, sweeping the wild-card miniseries at St. Louis before turning 1-1 NLDS and NLCS scenarios into Citizens Bank closeouts. That’s a big reason for the mutual love affair here, one that will blossom further if they, yes, stun the world and take three from Houston at home.
And if that happens, fast-forward 20 years and there will be plenty of Harper and Schwarber and Realmuto jerseys dotting the landscape, either tried-and-true originals or lovingly restored to recapture what was a glorious time.
Game 3 will go a long way towards determining that. And those in the box seats and bleachers will be anything but passive observers.
“They’ve been unbelievable every time we’ve been at home,” says Schwarber. “We feel like it’s just another element the visiting team is going to have to go through. We’re excited to get back and get on the lines for the intros and see the fans.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Phillies in World Series pitching hole vs. Astros pocket ‘Philly coming’