Phillies’ big boys must step up but the Game 2 matchup is rough
Some 48 hours after their latest crushing playoff loss, the Phillies attempt to regroup and achieve a split at Citizens Bank Park before heading out west.
It will be anything but simple against a customer as tough as Dodgers Game 2 starter Blake Snell.
The 32-year-old lefty has faced the Phillies eight times in his career. Four of the starts have been excellent, three have been scoreless and his team won the last two.
When Snell faced the Phillies on September 17, he authored as strong an outing against them as any pitcher in 2025: seven scoreless innings, two hits, 12 strikeouts. The Phils had all but clinched the 2-seed over the Dodgers at that point but still fielded a mostly full lineup, missing only then-injured Trea Turner and Alec Bohm. Both right-handed bats will certainly be in Monday’s lineup, though the Phils could be without Harrison Bader after a groin injury suffered in Game 1.
Current Phillies have a .168 lifetime batting average vs. Snell with only three home runs in just under 160 plate appearances. Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber and J.T. Realmuto have gotten to him once apiece. The most career success against Snell has belonged to Realmuto (5-for-21, two doubles, homer) and Edmundo Sosa (3-for-8, triple). Sosa is a near lock to be in the starting lineup.
Snell attacked the Phillies last month the way he attacks everyone — by using his 95 mph four-seam fastball, curveball and changeup against righties and throwing the four-seamer, curveball and slider to lefties.
Teams barely play their lefty hitters when facing Snell but the Phillies obviously will start a couple in Harper and Schwarber. The Bader injury may force them to start a third in Brandon Marsh. Lefties did not have a home run off Snell in 56 plate appearances this season and have hit .160 since the start of last season. Harper and Schwarber are a combined 4-for-27 with 12 strikeouts.
Snell is not infallible, though. He sprinkles in plenty of inefficient starts. The Phillies got to him in Game 2 of the 2022 NLCS, scoring four times in his five innings, all of them in the second. The rally was fueled by three straight no-out singles from Harper, Nick Castellanos and Bohm, followed by a Matt Vierling double and Sosa single. Snell ended his afternoon by retiring 10 of the final 11 to earn a win in the Padres’ comeback.
“I’ve done it before, but this place is special,” Snell said Sunday when asked about his preparation. “The fans show up. They’re passionate. They have energy. And, no, I can’t wait to pitch here tomorrow.
“Getting ready, there’s not really anything you can do to prepare for it. As it’s happening, just focus, breathe and enjoy the moment.”
The Phillies haven’t enjoyed enough of them at home in the postseason lately. They’ve dropped four of their last five home playoff games, scoring 1, 2, 2 and 3 runs in the losses.
“I don’t think so, I don’t feel that,” manager Rob Thomson said when asked if something changed for the Phils at home midway through the 2023 NLCS when the Diamondbacks stormed back on them.
“Our crowds have been outstanding. It was really loud and boisterous and rabid (Saturday) night, just like our normal playoff fans are. But I don’t sense any extra pressure. I feel like they’re loose. I feel like — we made a lot of good plays on defense (Saturday) night. We pitched well. We just didn’t get the big hit when we needed it. We had some chances. It’s the way it is. I think it’s just the ebbs and flows of the game, and we’ve got to come out here (Monday) and play well.”
To turn it around, they’re going to need more from the top of the order. Turner, Schwarber and Bohm were a combined 0-for-9 in Game 1. That trio is 6-for-53 in the Phillies’ last five playoff games, hitting .113 with one extra-base hit, a Harper double. In mid-July against a fourth-place team, you can afford to have a few down games from your big bats. Against Snell, Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and the Dodgers in a short series in October, you can’t.
“I thought, especially in the bottom of the order, I thought we really had pretty good at-bats all night long,” Thomson said of Game 1. “The guys at the top, they pitched them tough, a lot of breaking balls. Ohtani was really tough on them. But I thought the guys at the bottom did a nice job.”
Schwarber is 0-for-18 with 11 strikeouts in his last five games dating back to the regular season. This was always a fear — what might happen to the Phillies’ lineup if Schwarber goes into the kind of slump he avoided for six months? There were so many games, so many series and so many weeks this season when Schwarber played the hero. But what about the playoffs, when everything is tighter and teams are more prone to pitch around him? There were 20 to 25 games this season that Schwarber almost single-handedly won for the Phillies or was by far their most impactful bat. (If you think that’s an exaggeration, just click here and sort by WPA.)
The Phillies obviously need a win Monday night because the alternative is heading to Dodger Stadium down 2-0 in a Best-of-Five series and facing their ace, Yoshinobu Yamamoto. In that scenario, they’d have to overcome Yamamoto and potentially Ohtani again just to bring the series back to Philadelphia.
They also need to reexperience the completion of a victory at home. For all the talk the last several years about Citizens Bank Park creating “four hours of hell” for the opponent, the real torture has come for the Phillies and their fans in the form of leads lost late.