This is going to sound harsh right at the start, but here’s the deal. Craig Kimbrel is an objectively good major league pitcher. Alek Thomas is an objectively mediocre major league hitter. I’m not trying to say anything bad about Thomas, to be clear. I think he’s an awesome player, the kind of guy I’d like to have on my team for his impressive defensive ability. But Thomas started the day on the bench, and Kimbrel started the day as the Phillies closer. Neither of them look likely to head back to that role any time soon.
Why? Because after three hours and 14 pitchers, Game 4 of the NLCS came down to a simple matchup. Kimbrel stood on the mound. Lourdes Gurriel Jr. lounged on second base after a double to start the eighth. With a two-run lead, Kimbrel had a simple mission: keep the ball in the ballpark. His opponent? Thomas, who came in to pinch hit for Emmanuel Rivera. Thomas isn’t anyone’s idea of an ace pinch hitter. He compiled a 71 wRC+ this season, which brought his career mark to 72. He came into the game with a 56 wRC+ in the playoffs. The Phillies started a lefty, and it looked like Thomas might spend Friday’s game like he did Thursday’s, hanging out on the bench and then pinch running.
There was just one problem for Philadelphia: Kimbrel didn’t have his curveball. He’s built a Hall of Fame career on two pitches, but the standout is a knuckle curve that seems to tear the fabric of spacetime on its way home. It’s one of those pitches that, when it’s working, can’t be countered. It starts right in the middle of the plate, and then poof, it’s in the dirt while you flail helplessly. But on Friday, none of that was true. The first three curves Kimbrel threw missed badly. The fourth spun invitingly in the zone, and Evan Longoria barely missed it, socking a 96 mph line drive to deep left that landed in Brandon Marsh’s glove. Then Kimbrel missed with two curves to spot Thomas a 2-0 count.
Baseball’s a tough game, and it’s particularly tough to guess what pitch is coming next. The curveball isn’t working, so clearly it’s a fastball. But Kimbrel knows that Thomas knows that, so clearly it’s a curveball. But Thomas knows that Kimbrel knows that Thomas knows, so clearly it’s a fastball. You could swap iocaine powder between glasses forever, but at the end of the day, the curveball wasn’t working, and Thomas and Kimbrel both came to the same conclusion. This at-bat was going to be determined by fastballs.
Kimbrel dotted one on the inside corner that Thomas meekly fouled off. He missed further inside to take the count to 3-1. He came back with another one, inside again, which Thomas fouled off. A 3-2 count, still clearly fastball time, and Thomas had to be thinking inside, right? Right? Wrong:
ALEK THOMAS TIES IT! ? #NLCS pic.twitter.com/bucXC3XFMz
— MLB (@MLB) October 21, 2023
Thomas obliterated that ball, plain and simple. He hit it 104.2 mph and was out on it so quickly that he pulled it despite the kind of location that has announcers screaming “Go the other way!” Instead, he put it into the right field pool. In an instant, the entire previous game was erased. Kimbrel sagged, defeated, and followed by allowing two of the next three runners to reach. Gabriel Moreno slashed a single to center against the hastily summoned José Alvarado, the Diamondbacks led 6-5, and that was that (after Paul Sewald gritted his way through what was admittedly a nervy ninth).
That’s how the story ends. Hopefully, though, it won’t take away from how it started, because this game was bananas. Both teams looked at their pitching staff, shrugged their shoulders, and went to the bullpen. The Diamondbacks started reliever Joe Mantiply, a lefty aimed squarely at Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper. The Phillies countered with Cristopher Sánchez, who last started a game on September 24. He wasn’t even Philadelphia’s fourth starter this year; that’d be Taijuan Walker, who put together a solid season but hasn’t appeared in the playoffs. But Sánchez has electric stuff, and the Phillies have been knocking their opponents over with dominant pitches all postseason long, so I can see what they were thinking here.
Unfortunately, it turns out that sitting out for a month is not a good way to stay sharp. Sánchez’s control was intermittent at best. He threw a wild pitch, and a cross-up led to J.T. Realmuto being charged with a passed ball. He walked a batter and only recorded a single strikeout. In the second, Gurriel hit a no doubt double play ball directly to Sánchez, who lost track of how many outs there were and trotted over to first to end the inning – or so he thought. The next two runners reached to give Arizona a 1-0 lead. An inning later, Moreno singled home Ketel Marte. And so both teams started the reliever conga line, and the game teetered off its axis.
Lefty Kyle Nelson gave up a 137 mph line drive home run (estimated by me, and definitely not by Statcast) to Schwarber in the fourth. Andrew Saalfrank, whose job is specifically to get lefties out, did not get lefties out. He let Marsh hit a game-tying double, then came back the next inning to walk the bases loaded against Schwarber, Trea Turner, and Harper. Ryan Thompson came in to try to make an emergency landing, but the plane crashed: a chopped grounder to third turned into two runs when Rivera and Moreno couldn’t connect on a play at the plate, and the Phillies turned a 2-0 deficit into a 4-2 lead. When Thompson surrendered a one-out triple to Johan Rojas in the seventh, Philadelphia went ahead 5-2 on a sacrifice fly, and lampposts across Delaware County quaked in anxious jubilation.
On their side, however, the Phillies had plenty of their own pitching unrest to wade through. Jeff Hoffman opened up a cut on his pitching thumb while laboring through six batters. Seranthony Domínguez got himself into a jam almost immediately after entering, though he wriggled out of it without giving up a run. Gregory Soto faced three batters and allowed two baserunners – and then Orion Kerkering poured gasoline on the fire by walking the first two batters he faced, narrowing the score to 5-3. These bullpens were absolutely not up for it; the rookies looked rookie-ish, the veterans couldn’t find the strike zone, and frankly, they could all use a rest.
They might get one on Saturday. Zac Gallen and Zack Wheeler are scheduled for a duel, and both teams will lean heavily on their aces after emptying out the entire bullpen in Game 4. This was the kind of stumbling battle you expect to see when the back end of two Wild Card teams’ rotations face each other. Both offenses looked electric. Every pitcher seemed to be locked in a perpetual 3-1 count with a runner on second base, dancing distractingly. In the end, the most famous pitcher to take the mound turned a 5-3 lead into a 5-6 deficit in the blink of an eye. It wasn’t a night for pitchers. It was a night for chaos – and for Alek Thomas.
