In showdown of aces, Phils’ will to fight is evident
WASHINGTON » As usual, Gabe Kapler wasn’t short on smiles Saturday evening, but an extra glint flashed into his eye when he cast his gaze a day into the future.
Sunday would bring a rubber match between the Phillies and Nationals, yes. But it would also offer the kind of relevance that Kapler’s bosses envisioned when they gave him the job and a mandate to innovate, then backed him with a sprinkling of proven players, in the lineup, in the bullpen, in the rotation.
The latter set the stage Sunday with Jake Arrieta, winner of the 2015 National League Cy Young, on the mound in Phillies gray and red, against the winner of the last two Cy Youngs, Max Scherzer.
“No doubt,” Kapler said, “… we’re all pretty stoked for it.”
Kapler wasn’t as smiley Sunday, having watched his usually reliable bullpen squander a three-run lead and the Nationals walk off with a 5-4 win long after the star starters had exited. But something about the way his young team battled behind its highpriced ace was redolent of meaningful late-game showcases of the past.
“We thought of it that way, in the dugout,” Kapler said. “I think as a unit, our players were playing that way. And we were thinking about the game that way that this was a game that we were going to do everything we could to win it. It was definitely a playoff atmosphere out there. I think both sides fought really hard.”
The starting joust lived up to the billing, which was loaded with milestones. This was the first meeting of pitchers that had accounted for at least the last three Cy Young Awards in a league since 2001 (Tom Glavine and Randy Johnson). Sunday marked the 36th time that pitchers who had each thrown multiple no-hitters (a club of 33 men all-time) had opposed one another.
Those are the objective parameters. The subjective could be more resonant for the Phillies. Sunday’s matinee felt like a game that mattered, between two teams with aspirations for meaningful baseball in September and beyond, a commodity long lacking in Philadelphia. Even if the sedate crowd of 30,611 in Nationals Park didn’t always scream postseason ambience, the aspirational air of the Phillies dugout gathered what a win against the team that has captured four of the last six NL East titles could mean.
Though the all-business Arrieta poured cold water on the premise of it being anything special for him, it’s precisely that kind of no-nonsense edge from a World Series champ that stands out so starkly in a youthful clubhouse. And with the team, save for the back-end bullpen implosion, rising to the occasion against one of baseball’s best pitchers, it offers a hopeful sign of things to come.
Fittingly, both starters’ days ended simultaneously. Arrieta was lifted for pinch-hitter Nick Williams in the top of the seventh, the Phillies trailing 1-0. He went six, using 75 pitches and allowing two hits — one a Matt Adams solo homer to right to lead off the second inning — two walks and two strikeouts. He departed in line for the win, once Williams singled home Pedro Florimon to spark a three-run inning. Arrieta didn’t exactly like the decision, but then neither did the manager making the switch, with the full knowledge that his starter had complete-game stuff.
“I told Jake that we desperately wanted to send him back out there,” Kapler said. “I think he knew that we wanted very badly to send him back out there with how good he was pitching. When you’re running out of outs, you can’t give any more away.”
“It’s just one of those situations,” Arrieta said. “It’s tough to come out of the game, but you understand why you have to. That was one of those situations where it worked out for us.”
Arrieta’s line was more ruthlessly efficient, but Scherzer’s catches the eye. It took Scherzer 115 pitches to work 6⅓ innings. The reason: 15 strikeouts. He struck out seven consecutive Phillies from the second to the fourth innings and at one point recorded 12 straight outs via the punch out.
Scherzer became the first pitcher in big league history, per BaseballReference.com, to record 15 or more strikeouts in 6⅓ innings or less. The strikeout total was a seasonhigh and tied the fourthbest of his career, as the NL Pitcher of the Month for April notched his 69th career double-digit strikeout game and fifth in eight starts this season.
Scherzer has been a career Phillies killer — 8-0 with a 2.35 ERA in 12 career starts with the Nats. So forcing him to use pitches, exit early and ultimately swallow a no-decision feels like a win in itself, even if it came as the result of losing a lot of individual battles.
The bullpen collapse, with Hector Neris retiring none of the five batters faced in the ninth, leaves a stinging taste. Yes, it’s the first weekend of May. And yes, Sunday’s getaway featured teams sitting second and fourth in the National League East, a division where the only certainty is that its eventual champion won’t be the moribund Marlins.
But to show strongly in the first three of 19 meetings with the Nats is validation that the Phillies are on the right path. And with Arrieta doing his job and the majority of the lineup responding in kind, it’s an early statement of intent.
“The biggest thing for us is we fight,” Rhys Hoskins said. “Max had his stuff today. We got punched in the mouth for the first five innings by him. Ultimately we ended up taking the lead in the later parts. We don’t quit, no matter what the inning is, how many outs we have left. We don’t quit as a team and as an offense. And I think that’s pretty exciting going forward.”