11th Heaven: Insurmountable Braves top Phillies in extras, 6-5
· Yahoo Sports
The Braves had ‘em all the way. Yep, had ‘em all the way. At least, that’s what we’ll tell ourselves whenever a scintilla of a memory of this game pops into our brains, right? It took 12 innings, a brief blip from Chris Sale, and run-scoring scrambles in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh, another huuuuge hit from Ha-Seong Kim, and finally, a walkoff rope off the bat of Drake Baldwin, but the Braves ultimately prevailed in the opener of the final series against their division rivals.
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How do you recap this game? It felt like living a few different lifetimes. I guess we’ll just go sequentially, but this is a game that warrants watching the highlights.
After a 45-minute weather-related delay, things got started and Sale pretty much picked up where he left off. The top of the Philadelphia order went down on a flyout and two nasty strikeouts. Aaron Nola retired the first two Braves he faced, but then Matt Olson broke a two-week homerless slide with a slice the other way that juuust managed not to go foul and instead became his 38th longball of the year. A homer from the recently homer-shy Braves offense seemed to be an auspicious sign, but things quickly took a turn for the worse.
After the first two outs of the eighth, Edmundo Sosa caught a Sale slider and yanked it for a single. Sale then issued a rare walk to Bryan De La Cruz of all people, and then hit J.T. Realmuto with the next pitch, loading the bases.
***Derek Hill complaints interlude***
I freakin’ hate the Derek Hill 2026 phenomenon. In case you’re not aware, Hill is A) massively outhitting a terrible xwOBA, B) has an insane amount of WPA despite not actually performing well in higher leverage consistency, but C), most annoyingly, the White Sox traded Hill and some international bonus pool money to the Phillies for essentially nothing of value, after Hill played a key role in starting that whole Braves June swoon thing before the trade. If not for Derek Hill, this series probably wouldn’t even have much drama. Anyway…
***Interlude end***
Hill couldn’t get a hold of Sale’s 1-1 four-seamer down the middle, but he did get a hold of the next pitch, barreling it for a bases-clearing double that turned the game around. It’s possible that if the Braves were actually playing Hill to pull, Michael Harris II could have flagged it down, but that is absolutely not where they were playing him.
Sale recovered to strike out Kyle Schwarber, and then he pretty much resumed his business-as-usual pure domination. He faced just one over the minimum the rest of the game, with a leadoff walk erased on a double play and a two-out Luis Arraez the only other non-out yielded by him and his defense. Sale finished with a 6/2 K/BB ratio in seven innings of work — not hyper-dominance, but another strong outing for the ace.
Unfortunately for the Braves, they couldn’t really do much against Nola, either. They put two on with two out in the bottom of the second, but Nola struck out Sean Murphy on three pitches. In the third, Ronald Acuña Jr. doubled and Olson walked, but Harris and Mauricio Dubon couldn’t bring them home via weak contact. There was another runner stranded in the fourth, and Acuña hit into a double play to erase a Baldwin leadoff single in the fifth… only for Ozzie Albies to hit into a double play of his own after Nola clipped Dubon in the sixth.
In the seventh, though, things got a little closer. Leading off the frame, Austin Riley scooped an 0-1 sinker below the zone from Nola and absolutely demolished it, 110 mph off the bat and an estimated 434 feet of distance, to make it a 3-2 game. Mike Yastrzemski followed with a bloop single, and then Murphy barreled one to center… but that one was caught. Still, the Phillies removed Nola and inserted Jose Alvarado. The big left-hander punched out both Baldwin and Acuña, blowing away the latter on 98 mph inside the zone.
Dylan Lee and the defense got through the eighth (walk, double play, flyout), but Alex McFarlane (the guy victimized by Acuña in Philadelphia) got three outs in the air around a bloop single by Dubon in the bottom half of the inning. Bryce Harper blooped a double into the corner off Lee in the ninth, and Lee eventually gave way to Mederos, but the Phillies were kept off the board.
So, in the ninth, the Phillies went to Jonathan Bowlan, not wanting to use Jhoan Duran three days in a row. Bowlan struck out Riley, but Yastrzemski connected for a seeing-eye single, giving him a perfect 3-for-3-with-a-walk evening. And then, all hell broke loose for pretty much the rest of the game.
Murphy swung at an 0-1 slider from Bowlan and hit a hard smash between the second base bag and Trea Turner at shortstop. DaShawn Keirsey Jr., who was called up today to replace the injured Lane Thomas and had pinch-run for Yastrzemski, blazed around the bases. This probably would have set up a first-and-third situation, except that Hill misplayed the ball in center, and Keirsey sprinted home, tying the game. The Braves could’ve won it right then, but they didn’t — Bowlan plunked Baldwin, but then Acuña flied out and Olson’s hard-hit ball towards center was easily cut off by Turner for the third out.
So, the tenth, with Raisel Iglesias on the hill. Pinch-hitter Justin Crawford singled on Iglesias’ first pitch to score the free runner. The Phillies didn’t do much else, and Chase Shugart came on to pitch for the home half of the inning. Harris moved Brewer Hicklen (pinch-running for Olson as the free runner) to third with a groundout, and Dubon skied a first-pitch sweeper about neck-level to center, just deep enough for Hicklen to score. Both Hicklen and Dubon were so pumped about this turn of events — I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone go quite so berserk over a regular season, non-walkoff sacrifice fly.
The 11th started promisingly as Turner fouled out against Didier Fuentes on the first pitch. And, it did end promisingly, but not without a lot of drama. On a 2-0 pitch, Harper hit what probably should’ve been a fairly routine liner to Olson, but it didn’t end up a clean play and the Phillies had runners on the corners. Fuentes got ahead of Arraez 0-2, but the latter then pulled off his bread-and-butter, a 68 mph go-ahead single through the left side on a 99 mph fastball on the inner edge. A strikeout, a walk, and a grounder sent the game to the fateful bottom of the 11th.
Things first looked really bad (after looking really good): Riley grounded out, failing to advance the runner to third. The Phillies swapped to veteran lefty Brooks Raley. Then, Dominic Smith, who came in to play first because of Hicklen pinch-running for Olson, popped out on the first pitch. Uh-oh. It was all up to Ha-Seong Kim, but we’ve seen this story before: Kim smashed a hanging changeup 106 mph into left field, tying the game. Up next was Drake Baldwin, and that’s where this one ends. Baldwin battled Raley for a few pitches, and then hooked a sweeper on the low-outside corner into the right-center gap for a walkoff double. Kim flew around the bases, and no throw came… with Kim’s bellyflop, the Braves pushed the division lead back to five games and avoided a Sale start letdown.
The series continues tomorrow evening.