Cristopher Sánchez is the reason to believe in the Phillies after a stunning Game 1 loss to Braves
Win Game 2 with your ace on the mound. Find a way in Game 3. That was the most likely formula heading into the series.
ATLANTA — The only thing dead in the Phillies dugout was the stare from the guy who is now their brightest hope. All around him, Cristopher Sánchez’s stunned Phillies teammates gathered their belongings and shuffled toward the clubhouse tunnel in the wake of a come-from-behind 5-3 win by the Braves. But Sánchez remained, his eyes locked on the pitching rubber at Truist Park.
“Just looking out at the mound,” Phillies designated Kyle Schwarber said later, a gleam in his eye.
The Phillies competitive advantage in this best-of-three wild-card Series was always going to be Game 2. That was true before they nearly stole Game 1 with a two-run go-ahead triple by J.T. Realmuto off Didier Fuentes in the seventh inning. It remains true now, even after Austin Riley stole the game back with a three-run home run off Jhoan Duran in the eighth.
» READ MORE: Austin Riley’s ‘dagger’ three-run homer lifts Braves to 5-3 victory over Phillies in Game 1
Win Game 2 with your ace on the mound. Find a way in Game 3. That was the most likely formula heading into the series. It is the only formula now.
“We knew we had to win two out of three, we knew it wasn’t going to be easy,” Realmuto said. “Losing Game 1 isn’t going to deter us at all.”
The history is daunting, sure. Since MLB expanded its playoff format to include the best-of-three wild-card series, the winner of Game 1 has gone on to win the series 21 out of 24 times.
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Yet few of those teams had a pitcher like Sánchez starting Game 2. The veteran lefty enters the postseason fresh off a second straight Cy Young-caliber season, with a 2.91 ERA in 207 innings and a career-best strikeout rate of 10.0 batters per nine innings. Sánchez has faced the Braves twice this season, holding them to three runs in 12 innings with 13 strikeouts and four walks. Over the last two seasons, he has posted a 2.19 ERA in four starts against Atlanta.
That Sánchez has never faced Atlanta in the postseason is a testament to his meteoric rise over the last few seasons. In 2022 and 2023, when the Phillies twice knocked off the Braves in the National League Division Series, Sánchez pitched a total of 2⅓ postseason innings, all of them in the 2023 NL Championship Series against the Diamondbacks. By last October, he had become their ace, holding the Dodgers to three runs in 12 innings with 13 strikeouts and three walks in the Phillies’ four-game NLDS loss.
This year, there is nobody they’d rather have on the mound.
“The playoffs are momentum-based it seems like, and really momentum starts with your starting pitcher,” interim manager Don Mattingly. “It’s just a game at that point.”
Clearly, Game 1 was an opportunity squandered. It could very well prove decisive, especially if Duran’s 27-pitch workload in the seventh and eighth innings impacts his availability or effectiveness moving forward. Both Mattingly and Duran said afterward that they would wait and see about his availability for Game 2. Therein lies the most valid criticism of the manager’s strategy in Game 1. If you are going to risk Duran being unavailable behind Sánchez in Game 2, you’d better make sure you win Game 1.
They could have. That was surely Mattingly’s mindset, even if it would have left him still needing some other pitcher to save the game in the ninth.
» READ MORE: Hayes: Don Mattingly puts his future with the Phillies in peril as his strategy with Jhoan Duran backfires
The Braves had their guy on the mound, having won five of Chris Sale’s last six starts against the Phillies, all primarily because of him. The Phillies were forced to start Jesús Luzardo rather than Zack Wheeler, who would have been on the mound had they clinched a playoff berth sooner than Game 162. They nearly transcended those circumstances.
Luzardo was magnificent, facing the top of the Braves’ order three times and throwing 77 pitches in five innings despite entering the game having thrown just four pitches since returning from a 20-day stint on the injured list. The Phillies took a 1-0 lead in the first inning on an RBI double by Alec Bohm. Luzardo gave up a leadoff double to Mauricio Dubón in the bottom of the second, which eventually led to a game-tying run. It was the only run Luzardo allowed.
While the Braves briefly retook the lead on an Ozzie Albies triple off rookie setup man Alex MacFarlane in the sixth, the Phillies answered loudly with Realmuto’s two-run triple to the right field corner in the seventh.
It sure felt like we’d seen this sort of thing before. For eight innings, all of it was there. The demon lurking in the corners of their minds, memories of postseasons past. Three losses in four games in 2022. Three losses in four games in 2023. Orlando Arcia poking the bear. Realmuto racing around the bases for an inside the park home run in 2022. This was the postseason and it was the Phillies and it was the Braves and thus, all of it felt as if it’d already been written.
And then it didn’t. One swing of the bat was all that it took. It came in a manner that, from the other dugout, felt like an exorcism. Two on, two out, one-run lead, Duran on the mound, the Phillies four outs away from stealing a Game 1 win on Tuesday in which everything seemed to be going right.
» READ MORE: Short of a Cristopher Sánchez complete game, the Phillies will again face the issue that cost them Game 1
“You know, everyone walks away from that game and everyone says what if,” Schwarber said. “The what ifs go away when you leave here. Everyone’s focused on the task at hand tomorrow.”
The guy on the mound will help.
