Austin Riley turned Game 1 on its head with one swing, and the Phillies’ bullpen gamble never recovered.
Atlanta beat Philadelphia 5-3 on Thursday in the opener of the NL wild-card series, with Riley launching a go-ahead three-run homer off Jhoan Duran in the eighth inning. The Braves then finished it off in the ninth to take a 1-0 lead in the best-of-three set.
The game had already featured strong work from both starters. Chris Sale gave Atlanta 6 1/3 innings and matched a postseason career high with nine strikeouts. On the other side, Jesus Luzardo was far better than expected in a role that was supposed to be just an opener, throwing 77 pitches, allowing one run and getting through five innings.
But the late innings decided everything.
Philadelphia had grabbed a 3-2 lead in the seventh when J.T. Realmuto came through with a two-run triple.
Realmuto had finished the regular season in a deep slump, going 1-for-39 down the stretch, and he posted a .614 OPS in 123 regular-season games. In the postseason, though, none of that mattered for one at-bat.
Neither did Riley’s rough year at the plate. The Braves third baseman, who owns the largest contract in franchise history, put together the worst OPS of his career at .654 and slugged .364 over 159 games.
Yet when Atlanta needed a big hit, he delivered again. Riley jumped on Duran’s first pitch with runners on first and second and sent a 385-foot shot just over the wall in right-center to make it 5-3.
The homer was Riley’s sixth postseason blast, and it added another line to a remarkable October résumé. It was his third career go-ahead postseason homer in the eighth inning or later, tying Bernie Williams, Troy Glaus, Jose Altuve and Freddie Freeman for the most in postseason history, according to Sarah Langs of MLB.com.
The bigger issue for Philadelphia was how thin the relief picture looked once the game tightened. Don Mattingly turned to Duran in the seventh to protect a one-run lead, a move that made sense given the state of the bullpen, even if it carried real risk.
Duran had pitched more than one inning only once all season, and by the time he returned for the eighth, the inning unraveled. Michael Harris opened with an infield single, Ozzie Albies was hit with a full-count pitch, and Riley followed by punishing the first offering.
That sequence exposed the depth problem Philadelphia has carried all year. The Phillies entered the series with only two relievers on the wild-card roster who had an ERA below 3.30, and one of them, Alex McFarlane, had already been used in relief of Luzardo in the sixth.
McFarlane allowed Ozzie Albies’ go-ahead RBI triple, and the club never found a clean answer after that. Duran wound up throwing 27 pitches, tied for the second-most he has thrown in a game this season.
Philadelphia’s bullpen posted a 4.43 ERA during the regular season, and the front office tried to address it at the trade deadline by bringing in Brooks Raley and Caleb Kilian in separate deals. Neither pitched well enough to make the postseason roster. That left Mattingly without much comfort late, with Tim Mayza, Jonathan Bowlan, José Alvarado, Chase Shugart and Tanner Banks all sitting in the background as options he did not want to use in that spot.
After the game, Mattingly called the home run “frustrating,” but said the club had its “best guy out there.”
"It's frustrating. But in our minds, we had our best guy out there, you live with this one."
He also pointed out that Duran got through the seventh inning easily, and if the eighth had gone differently, there was at least a chance he could have gone back out for the ninth. That only underscored how little margin the Phillies feel they have in high-leverage relief spots.
With Duran having thrown 27 pitches, Mattingly may need to lean on a different arm in Game 2, depending on how deep Cristopher Sanchez can go when the series resumes Wednesday at 2:00 p.m. ET at Truist Park in Atlanta.
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