Kyle Schwarber bunting foul with two strikes in the ninth inning was mind-boggling. The Phillies looked more and more like they were grasping at straws in the final innings.
Sometimes, you have to take a deep breath and have some faith in your guy. Pulling your starting pitcher when he has been dominant, even unhittable, after a 71-pitch five innings simply because he gave up two singles shows a level of underlying panic.
Having said that, there were moments when some of Philadelphia’s moves made no sense. The Phillies often had to twist themselves into increasingly bizarre positions to keep pace. Dusty Baker had a bullpen at his disposal that meant that he was under no pressure to perform acrobatics to close out innings. To have taken the Astros to six games is something that they can really be proud of, all things considered.īut in the end, the depth and quality of the Astros won out. The fact that they got here at all is a miracle. To get to the World Series, they had to do things the hard way, playing and winning the most playoff games on the road of any team. But no, they turned it around and squeaked into the Wild Card series. They would have been forgiven for simply muddling through the season, finishing somewhere in the middle of the division. After a dismal start, they fired their coach and turned over the reins to their bench coach Rob Thomson. The Philadelphia Phillies, by contrast, had a season that should have condemned them to a season bound in shallows and miseries.
They kept pace with the Dodgers and Yankees throughout the season and as the dog days of summer started to wear on their opposition, the Astros seemed to find a second wind.Įasily topping the American League, they had an easier road than the Phillies did through the post season, with a week’s rest and home field advantage that looked as if it may have backfired on them in the ALCS. From the early days of April, it was clear that the Houston Astros were one of the best teams in baseball, if not the best.
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