The zeros kept piling up, the pressure kept building, and then, with the bases loaded and two outs in Thursday’s 11th inning, Orion Kerkering, the Philadelphia Phillies’ young reliever, found himself in the middle of chaos. A slow roller off the bat of Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Andy Pages bounced off his left foot and settled a few steps in front of him. Baserunners were sprinting everywhere, 50,000-plus people were going ballistic. Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto tried to settle everything down by making eye contact with his pitcher and imploring him to make the easy throw to first baseman Bryce Harper.
But panic set in.
“Once the pressure got to me, I just thought there’s a faster throw to J.T., little quicker throw than trying to cross-body it to Bryce,” Kerkering said. “Just a horses— throw.”
The ball sailed toward Dodger Stadium’s backstop, allowing Hyeseong Kim to score the winning run in the Dodgers’ 2-1 victory in Game 4 of the National League Division Series. It eliminated the Phillies, abruptly ending a season in which they believed just as strongly as ever that they might win it all. And it sent the Dodgers to the NL Championship Series for the seventh time in 10 years, their hopes of becoming Major League Baseball’s first repeat champions in a quarter century still very much in play.
“Pure joy,” said Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy, whose team awaits the winner between the Milwaukee Brewers and Chicago Cubs. “A little bit of laughter because I wasn’t sure what happened. The way everyone was standing around, I thought it was a foul ball at first. But then it just turned into pure joy. I looked over at Andy and he’s upset about a broken bat at first and then he realizes, ‘Oh, I just won the game.’ Just a huge roller coaster of emotions.”
Dodgers reliever Alex Vesia referred to Game 4 as “a heavyweight fight,” but he could have been describing the entire series.
Dodgers-Phillies was a matchup of two of the sport’s most talented, star-studded rosters, packed with devastating rotations and decorated lineups. The starting pitching shined brightest. Through the first three games, the six traditional starting pitchers in this series — Blake Snell, Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto for the Dodgers; Cristopher Sanchez, Jesus Luzardo and Ranger Suarez for the Phillies — combined for a 3.03 ERA and 37 strikeouts in 32⅔ innings.
Kerkering’s errant throw home marked the 11th time a walk-off run had scored on an error in the playoffs, and just the second time it happened in the clinching game. The Phillies were eliminated via walk-off loss for the fourth time in franchise history — and the first time since Joe Carter’s infamous home run off Mitch Williams in the 1993 World Series.
The Dodgers clinched a playoff series in walk-off fashion for the third time, but they did something even bigger: They got past the Phillies, perhaps the most talented team they’ll face in these playoffs.
[Article courtesy of espn.com]
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