PHILADELPHIA — Hope went for a ride on Ronald Acuña Jr.’s fly ball to deep center in the top of the seventh inning. If it could just fall safely, it could release the pressure that had squeezed the Braves offense for nearly all of the first four games of the National League Division Series against the Phillies.
Spinning through the night at nearly 98 mph, it was carrying to the center-field wall of Citizens Bank Park. Johan Rojas, the Phillies’ rookie center fielder, broke for the fall but changed direction at the last second, unsteadily veering toward the padded wall.
Maybe.
With two outs, all three base runners had taken off on contact. With a hit, all would score and lift the Braves into a 4-3 lead if the ball could just elude Rojas’ grasp. Rojas leapt off his left foot and extended his glove into the air.
“Obviously, they’ve got a good center fielder who can cover a lot of ground, but you’re hoping, praying that it found grass,” third baseman Austin Riley said. “Unfortunately, it didn’t.”
Out.
“If that dropped, (pinch runner Nicky Lopez, who was on first) was already about to round third, so we take the lead there and that would have shifted the momentum huge,” said Michael Harris II, himself the author of the series’ other game-changing catch in center field, but also someone who finished the series 0-for-13 at the plate.
Acuña pulled up to a stop between first and second base. His body language betrayed no emotion. But the eruption of noise in the stands explained everything – the Braves’ last, best chance to stay alive and force Game 5 back in Atlanta had just come to rest in Rojas’ glove. A team whose production in the regular season was so relentless that big innings took on a feeling of inevitability now could only hope for a big hit. And now that had just been snatched away, too.
The rest followed quickly and unsurprisingly. The Braves launched a final attempt in the top of the ninth, putting runners on first and third with no outs. The tying run stood on first base. But a pop-up (Kevin Pillar), a flyout (Eddie Rosario) and a strikeout (Vaughn Grissom, pinch hitting) ended the season of one of the best teams in franchise history at 11:15 p.m. Thursday.
Phillies 3, Braves 1. Game, series and season over.
“It stinks,” catcher Travis d’Arnaud said. “We obviously all had a goal of winning the World Series, and it’s tough to process at this moment. I’m sure a week or two from now, I’ll be able to process it a little better. But for us to not obtain what we wanted, it stinks.”
The lasting mystery and aggravation of this team’s failed attempt to bring home the franchise’s fifth World Series title and second in three seasons will rest with the team’s near-complete in ability to produce runs in its four playoff games. Entering the postseason with the best record in baseball (104-58) and status as favorites to be the last team standing, the Braves were eliminated in four games. They were outscored by a combined 20-8. Five of the eight were scored in their lone win of the series, the arresting 5-4 victory in Game 2 in what proved the final game of the season at Truist Park.
The Braves exited the postseason with a meekness that stood in sharp contrast to their fearsome regular-season performance. The team that tied the major-league record with 307 home runs – a staggering 1.9 per game – played four games with a mere three. The home-run torrent boosted the Braves’ slugging percentage to .501, the highest in major-league history for a season. It was .264 in the four games against the Phillies, one lone double supplementing the home-run total. The Braves hit a collective .186 against a Phillies pitching staff that was effective during the regular season but hardly great – their 4.03 ERA was 12th in baseball and opponents hit .240 against them.
What is there to say to explain the disappearance?
Rust caused by the layoff during the wild-card round, building pressure, a well-executed game plan by the Phillies, the influence of the rabid Citizens Bank Park crowd – all apply.
“They did a good job of expanding (the strike zone) on us when we seemed aggressive and pounded the zone when we seemed like we were trying to be patient,” said first baseman Matt Olson, who led MLB in home runs and RBIs this season, but was 4-for-16 in the series without a home run or RBI.
It was almost as if the Phillies pitchers were reading the Braves’ minds, he added.
Acuña, the likely NL MVP after becoming the first player in the game’s history to reach 40 home runs and 70 stolen bases in a single season, finished 2-for-14 with no home runs and two stolen bases.
“I can’t explain it,” manager Brian Snitker said of his team’s wilting at the plate. “I don’t know what the remedy is. It’s just baseball. It happens and stinks when it does.”
The Braves’ misery will find company with the Orioles (101-61), Dodgers (100-62), Rays (99-63) and the Brewers (92-70) – the teams with the five best regular-season records. All five failed to make it past the division series round. The Braves can find particular solace with the Dodgers. The NL West champs hit .177 and scored six runs in three games to get swept out of the NLDS by the Diamondbacks after hitting .257 and averaging 5.6 runs per game in the regular season, second most in the majors behind the Braves.
A repeated observation was that the players were waiting for a big hit to break the ice, but it didn’t arrive. Not in Game 3 on Wednesday when Ozzie Albies scored Acuña with a single for a 1-0 lead in the top of the third and not in Game 4 on Thursday when Riley hit a solo home run in the top of the fourth for another 1-0 lead. In both games, the Phillies kept the Braves from scoring again in the inning. In Game 3, Philadelphia answered with six runs in the bottom of the third. On Thursday, it was single runs in its next three turns at bat as Nick Castellanos (twice) and Trea Turner took starter Spencer Strider deep.
It was the same lament expressed after their four-game defeat to the same Phillies in the same NLDS round last year, when the Braves were held to a .180 batting average and a combined 13 runs.
“It’s brutal,” Olson said. “They outplayed us. They outplayed us last year, they outplayed us this year.”
This was a fantastic regular season propelled by players easy to root for. But the result will be the same for a second consecutive season, a superior regular season leading to a thud of an ending at the hands of the Phillies.
Brutal indeed.
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