PHILADELPHIA — Arizona’s star rookie Corbin Carroll, held in check for most of the National League Championship Series, broke out in a big way Tuesday night.
Carroll had three hits and a sacrifice fly, knocking in two runs and scoring two more, enough for the Arizona Diamondbacks to come away with a 4-2 victory in Game 7 of the NLCS, and ending what for quite a while appeared to be a dream season for the home team at Citizens Bank Park.
The Diamondbacks, who lost the first two games of the series here to a cumulative tune of 15-3, will move on to the World Series to face another unlikely wild card team, the Texas Rangers. The Fall Classic begins Friday, while the 2022 Series teams, the Astros and Phillies, failed to repeat and will watch from afar.
“That’s a good club, and they really played well,” Phils manager Rob Thomson said. “You come into this building and beat us twice in this type of atmosphere, you’re doing some things right. But they pitched well. They really did.”
The loss is devastating to a Phillies team that had seemed unbeatable at home this season, magic that only heightened when two-plus rounds of playoffs stretched a winning streak against NL postseason opposition to a record 11 straight wins. But after winning just one of three in Phoenix last week, the magic evaporated in a pair of losses Monday and Tuesday nights.
Nick Castellanos, for obvious example, went from a big bopper who had an All-Star season and five homers in a three-game stretch to end the NLDS and start this series. But he finished last night on a 1-for-24 tailspin.
Now what?
“I remember last year, when we lost, I was asked a similar question,” Castellanos said. “And I’m going to answer the same way – I’m excited for spring training.”
Even Bryce Harper and Trea Turner had their troubles as the series grew long, both failing to get big hits in potential run-producing at bats in Game 7, including with two on in the seventh.
“They pitched those guys really well, and that’s the ebbs and flows of offense,” Thomson said. “People aren’t going to hit every single day of the season. It’s just not going to happen. Other guys (have) got to pick it up. Other guys have got to get it done, and you have to pass the baton and move people up and get people on base and put pressure on people.
“We had some people on base tonight. We couldn’t get the big hit.”
The Diamondbacks struck first on starting pitcher Ranger Suarez, who led off the game by striking out oh-so tough Ketel Marte. But an infield single by Carroll and a hit by Gabriel Moreno put the D-backs in business.
Christian Walker’s fielder’s choice grounder brought home Carroll with the first run of the game. Carroll, who was 3-for-23 in the series before Monday, went 3-for-4 with two runs scored and two RBIs.
The lead didn’t last long. In fact, on starter Brandon Pfaadt’s first pitch in the second, Alec Bohm fattened the crowd in left with a line drive gift. The home run, coming after a day of social mediaites calling for Bohm to be dropped from the cleanup spot, tied the game at 1.
Bohm made his presence felt again in the fourth, taking a one-out walk. Bryson Stott followed with a liner to left-center that split the fielders and got to the wall, and Bohm came all the way around to score. The Phillies would then load the bases with nine-hitter Johan Rojas, hitting all of .095 in the postseason, due up. Before long he would be sitting down with a strikeout.
That opened the door for the Diamondbacks to assume the lead in the fifth. Emmanuel Rivera started the inning with a single and was sacrificed to second. After Suarez struck out Marte for a third straight time, Carroll got his third straight hit, plating Rivera with the tying run. (Marte would double in the eighth to extend his postseason hitting streak to 16 games, one shy of the major league record.)
That would be it for Suarez after only 75 pitches. Reliever Jeff Hoffman came in and promptly gave up a single to catcher Gabriel Moreno and Carroll scored the go-ahead run. The Phillies couldn’t immediately respond, as a leadoff double by Kyle Schwarber went for naught, though Harper did drive one to the warning track in left.
After Carroll did his thing again in the seventh, this time a sacrifice fly to plate an insurance run, the Phillies wheeled out their ace, Zack Wheeler, to pitch them out of further trouble. That set the stage for another golden chance in the bottom half for the Phils.
One out walks to pinch-hitter Cristian Pache and Schwarber set them up. But against hard-throwing reliever Kevin Ginkel, Turner and Harper launched almost identical fly balls to center for easy outs, and a quiet tension permeated what had been a loud Citizens Bank Park.
“He threw me the pitch I wanted,” Harper said with a shake of his head. “It went 2-1 and he threw me a heater. And it just … not being able to come through in that moment just devastates me. For me personally, I feel like I let my team down and let the city of Philadelphia down as well. That’s a moment I feel like I need to come through.”
That feeling only exacerbated the other chance Harper had in the fifth, on his just-missed drive to the warning track after the Schwarber double.
“I’d like to have two pitches back,” Harper said.
Even Bohm went quiet, striking out badly against Ginkel to lead off the eighth and responding by twice slamming his bat in the dirt until it broke. Stott followed with a strikeout swing even worse than Bohm’s, and J.T. Realmuto ended the inning with a half-swing that seemed to define the state of his team.
