PHILADELPHIA — You know what they say about first impressions, right? Well forget it. It’s nonsense.
The Phillies have run back last season’s NLDS result: a 3-1 victory over the rival Atlanta Braves, the no. 1 seed in the National League bracket. This time out was a little more acrimonious than the last, at times a little more touch-and-go, as a cavalcade of pitchers only barely kept the cap on the violently fizzing soda bottle that is Atlanta’s offense.
But with Braves ace Spencer Strider standing between the Phillies and a return to the NLCS, two players who were on the verge of being run out of town in the past 12 months — Nick Castellanos and Trea Turner — put the team on their backs.
“Those two are tough guys,” said Phillies manager Rob Thomson. “I don’t know the numbers, but at times when guys sign big contracts, they expect to do a lot. They want to do a lot for their teammates, for the fan base, for the city, and so they put a little extra pressure on themselves. And it takes a while just to relax and settle in and be themselves. Both those guys have done that now, and I’m happy about that.”
When the Phillies went all-in on power bats before the 2022 season, Castellanos was the team’s premier acquisition, earning a five-year, $100 million contract after a big 2021 campaign with the Reds. The 2022 season went poorly: a .263/.305/.389 line and 94 wRC+, and with indifferent defense in right field, he was a below-replacement-level player overall. Castellanos did provide some essential glovework in the playoffs, but in 69 plate appearances he hit just .185/.232/.246.
And yet manager Rob Thomson hit him fifth in every game of last postseason, behind Bryce Harper. That meant that when Castellanos made an out, it often derailed a rally. In 12 high-leverage plate appearances with men on base, Castellanos went 3-for-11, all singles, and hit into two double plays. It was not the way anyone wanted Castellanos’ Phillies career to start, and the four remaining years on his deal looked quite long indeed.
“Even though I didn’t perform well, I enjoyed the postseason last year because I was grateful that I had the opportunity to play,” Castellanos said. “This year, I feel like it’s just me being in a more comfortable spot. All the extra energy that comes with playoff baseball, I’m able to channel it better.”
Castellanos was much better in 2023, hitting .272/.311/.476 and making the All-Star team. And since the Phillies-Braves series swung north, he’s been sublime. Harper was the headline figure in Game 3, but when the Braves broke through to open the scoring against Aaron Nola on Wednesday night, it was Castellanos who answered back first with a solo home run.
In Game 4, the Phillies probed Strider frequently in the early innings, putting two men on base with one out in each of the first three innings, but each time they came up with diddly-squat. Between his Game 1 start and the first three innings of Game 4, Ranger Suárez had been unhittable; the Braves had managed just three baserunners — a hit, a walk, and an error — off the Phillies lefty in that time.
But in the fourth inning of Game 4, they started to figure him out. Austin Riley plucked a changeup off his shoes and flung it just over the left field fence to put Atlanta up 1-0; any lengthy preservation of that lead would suck the life out of the Phillies and give Strider a chance to recover.
“We know how important momentum is in these postseason games,” Castellanos said. “So anytime that you feel it may be swinging in the other direction, we do a very good job of locking it in to get the momentum back in our favor. That’s important to our team.”
Sure enough, it was Castellanos who answered once again. He turned on a first-pitch slider from Strider and knocked it out of the park. All night, the Braves’ ace had been able to throw past Phillies hitters but struggled to locate and left occasional hittable mistakes in the zone. When he faced Castellanos again with two outs in the fifth, he was emptying the tank. The fourth pitch of the at-bat was a 100.7 mph fastball. The fifth came in at an even 100, and left at 112.4:
OOPS HE DID IT AGAIN pic.twitter.com/wbYPHVmECq
— Philadelphia Phillies (@Phillies) October 13, 2023
It was the hardest-hit ball Castellanos had ever hit in a Phillies uniform. The second-hardest-hit, 112.2 mph, was Castellanos’ Game 3 homer against AJ Smith-Shawver. He’s the third Phillie to record two multi-home run games in a single postseason, and the first player from any team to homer more than once in consecutive playoff games.
“I think he’s unique. He’s one of one,” Turner said of Castellanos after the game. “I don’t know if I’ve met anybody like him. And I mean that in a good way. He’s different. And he can really, really hit… It’s cool seeing him just do his thing. And regardless of what people think about him, he’s just his own person. So I love him and respect him for that. This series has been really cool just for him individually, but as a team, too.”
When Castellanos came out to right field to start the top of the seventh, the crowd roared to salute him, like a Roman consul celebrating a triumph. A crowd of skeptics had become a multitude of admirers — his multitude, as he was reminded an inning later when the thunderous applause reappeared for his fourth plate appearance. Castellanos duly grounded a ball through the left side to reach base for the fourth time on the night, and to record the 44th game of three hits or more in Phillies playoff history.
An inning earlier, Turner beat out an infield single to become the first Phillies player to record four base hits in a playoff game.
Turner was the latest addition to the Phillies’ cavalcade of starts, signing an 11-year, $300 million contract during last year’s winter meetings. And having won a World Series in Washington, Turner’s maiden voyage in his first season up I-95 started out pitiably.
After Game 4, Turner was asked how his experience with the Phillies so far compared to his expectations when he signed that deal.
“I didn’t think I would stink for 100 games, and I did,” Turner said.
Turner’s mighty struggles in the first half of the season are well-documented, as is the pick-me-up he got from Phillies fans in early August. That ovation has come to define Turner’s season; the only other place “Turner” and “Ovation” show up this frequently, this close together, is on the acoustic guitar rack at Sam Ash.
Turner was hitting .235/.290/.368 when Citizens Bank Park gave him that push; he hit .339/.391/.677 for the rest of the regular season, and in six postseason games, he’s 12-for-24 with four doubles, two home runs, and four stolen bases.
In three plate appearances against Strider, Turner saw five pitches and swung at every single one. The first two, triple-digit fastballs, he fouled off. The remaining three went for base hits: a first-inning double, then a third-inning single. With one out in the fifth, Strider gave Turner the ball he was looking for: first-pitch slider, belt-high and on the inner half of the plate:
TREA SHIESTY IS AT IT AGAIN pic.twitter.com/4bBIhl3GzC
— Philadelphia Phillies (@Phillies) October 13, 2023
That was the $300 million hit, the eventual game-winning home run off the unhittable opponent in the most important game of the year to date.
“[Strider]’s got great stuff. We all know it,” Turner said. “I feel like in the past, in my at-bats off him, I missed [those pitches], fouled them off, whatever it is. And I [tip my] cap to him, because he’s got good stuff. But tonight it was just: Don’t miss those pitches. I got those pitches to hit, and I didn’t miss them.”
Turner was busy in the field as well: He recorded either the assist or the putout on six of Atlanta’s first 12 outs, and would have had a seventh if Harper had made a better pick on a ball that went down as a Turner throwing error.
Over the course of the game, Turner, Harper, and Castellanos — Philadelphia’s three highest-paid position players, under contract for nearly three quarters of a billion dollars among them — showed, in Harper’s words, “why you spend the money, baby.”
These three came to the plate 12 times in total and made a grand total of one out: 8-for-9 with three walks, three home runs, and a double.
The Phillies never did pull ahead by enough to relax. Craig Kimbrel used every bit of road available to him, plus the shoulder, plus scuffing his hubcaps on the curb, in stomping out a seventh-inning rally. Ronald Acuña Jr. drove a ball to the gap in left center with the bases loaded and two out, but watched Johan Rojas drag it down.
the silence – the explosion
rojas catch with no commentators and just crowd noise pic.twitter.com/vM43M1dDwl— jaiden (@steph_turkey) October 13, 2023
The Braves put the tying run on base again with nobody out in the ninth, before Matt Strahm procured the final three outs. Scariest of all, Harper took a bump to his surgically repaired right arm on a close play at first in the eighth; he came off the field in the arms of reliever Gregory Soto, but stayed in the game and appears no worse for wear.
And so the Phillies spin forward to the NLCS with their ideal roster almost entirely intact. It’s an unusually advantageous position for a team to be in this deep into October. With most of the top seeds having attritted themselves out of the playoff picture, the Phillies are favorites to win the pennant again, and virtual co-favorites, with the Astros, to win the World Series.
That was what everyone — players, team, fans — expected of Turner and Castellanos when they signed in Philadelphia. Thomson was asked if he was happy the Phillies had opened their checkbook to sign these players.
“Yeah, it’s not my money, so I’m very happy that we signed them,” Thomson joked. “Thanks to [Phillies owner] John Middleton.”
Thomson and his expensive charges are now eight wins from the ultimate prize, and playing better than ever. It was a rocky start, but now everything is going according to plan.
