LOS ANGELES — Orion Kerkering walked off the field Thursday night with Nick Castellanos’ arm draped around him, with Bryson Stott consoling him, with J.T. Realmuto having run to his aid as the opening bars of “I Love L.A.” played.
If it looked like platoon mates helping a buddy off the battlefield grafted onto the elysian infield of Dodger Stadium, it felt a little like that in the aftermath.
“I understand what he’s feeling, not the exact emotions, but I can see that,” Castellanos said, of his sprint in from right field to intercept a bereft Kerkering before he’d reached the first-base line. “So I didn’t even have to think twice about it. That’s where I needed to run to.”
Through tears, Kerkering tried to explain in the visitors’ clubhouse exactly what had happened in the bottom of the 11th inning. How he’d bobbled and lost track of Andy Pages’ broken-bat dribbler to the mound with the bases loaded and two outs. How he’d reflexively tossed to home plate, even with Realmuto pointing to first base, even with everyone with a vested interest in the Phillies yelling some version of “FIRST” or “ONE” over the din of 50,563 spectators.
And how it all ended in Game 4 of the National League Division Series away from home for the second straight year, a 2-1 loss to the Dodgers that means the Phillies again failed to reach their pennant-winning high of 2022, much less secure their ultimate goal of taking it a step further to a world title.
Kerkering knocked down but couldn’t find at his feet the comebacker from Pages, who played the hero in a series in which he was officially 1-for-15 at the plate. With Realmuto pointing to first, Kerkering instead airmailed the plate. A good throw may never have gotten pinch-runner Hyeseong Kim, who didn’t even slide. But Pages was dead to rights at first if only Kerkering turned that way.
“It hit off my foot,” said Kerkering, who was officially tagged with two errors on the play. “Once that pressure got to me, I just thought, it’s a faster throw to J.T., little quicker than trying to throw it cross-body to Bryce (Harper, at first). Just a horseshit throw.”
Castellanos was perhaps the most visible, but to a man the Phillies paraded to Kerkering’s locker to make sure the 24-year-old knew how much of the result wasn’t his fault.
“Just keep his head up,” Rob Thomson said of a conversation he had in the dugout with the reliever. “He just got caught up in the moment a little bit. Coming down the stretch there, he pitched so well for us. I feel for him because he’s putting it all on his shoulders. But we win as a team, and we lose as a team.”
The apportionment of blame will take a cross-country flight to digest, but for the fourth straight postseason, the culprits are maddeningly familiar – in a game where the offense managed four hits and no discernible slug; where two runs score when relievers allowed a walk and committed an error with the bases loaded.
One part of the culpability is the latest in a long line of postseason bullpen failures.
In the 2024 NLDS and first two games of this series (six games), the Phillies bullpen had allowed 21 earned runs in 19 innings, an ERA of 9.95. Strong performance by Ranger Suarez and those leading up to Kerkering Thursday cut that to 21 in 32.1 innings over eight games (5.85 ERA). But Phillies relievers in their last eight postseason games have allowed 18 of 28 inherited runners to score.
That wasn’t the entire difference in Game 4. The Phillies offense that struck out 12 times, had just four hits and for the third time in four games failed to hit a home run cannot be absolved. The Kerkering incident showed the simple value of putting the ball in play, on a day when the Phillies were 1-for-7 with runners in scoring position.
“Looking at this series, a lot of really good pitching, and I think pitching wins championships,” Harper said. “It’s something that both sides have, and just all around a good series of pitching.”
The Dodgers’ Tyler Glasnow, who recorded five crucial outs in relief in Game 1, navigated six innings with two hits and three walks in Game 4. He struck out eight. Dave Roberts got him out of the game at 83 pitches.
Emmet Sheehan allowed a lead-off single in the 7th to Realmuto, who was erased on a fielder’s choice. But Sheehan whiffed on the return throw to first – foreshadowing the night’s pitchers-as-fielders travails – allowing Max Kepler to get into scoring position. That extra 90 feet helped when Castellanos roped a double down the line to make it 1-0 in the top of the seventh.
The lead didn’t survive an inning.
Thomson was always going to ride Cristopher Sanchez until he faltered and hope the bullpen could prevent damage. When Alex Call walked and Kikè Hernandez singled with one out in the seventh, Sanchez’s day was done. Jhoan Duran induced a groundout from Pages, who had a homer off him, and intentionally walked Shohei Ohtani, who bumbled through the series at 1-for-18 with nine strikeouts but had two career homers off Duran.
That left little room for error on Mookie Betts, who held off on two splitters out of the zone to start the at-bat and held back on two fastballs above it to draw the bases loaded walk. Duran recovered to get Teoscar Hernandez to wave at a curveball and end the threat.
The Dodgers likewise went to their closer in the eighth. But Roki Sasaki, the converted starter who spent most of the summer injured and never built back up to a starter’s workload, managed to eke out three uber efficient innings. He threw just 36 pitches to retire all nine batters he faced.
Duran was done after five outs. The Phillies turned to Matt Strahm for a clean 9th, then ostensible Game 5 starter Jesus Luzardo for the 10th. Luzardo got five outs, before singles by Tommy Edman and Max Muncy chased him.
Kerkering was about the last trusted line of defense in the bullpen. He walked Kikè Hernandez after going up in the count, then added his name to Phillies all-time infamy.
Castellanos has been in a version of Kerkering’s shoes before. He made the final out of the 2022 World Series in Houston, the run that informed all the expectations that were dashed again Thursday. On that night, at then Minute Maid Field, first-base coach Paco Figueroa was there to make sure Castellanos didn’t walk off the field.
Thursday, Castellanos paid the deed forward, even if the situations feel diametrically different. Then, a younger core who’d excelled in its first brush of postseason baseball seemed poised to be the class of National League baseball for the foreseeable future. It’s yielded three 90-win seasons and two NL East titles but nothing more satisfying.
With Realmuto, Kyle Schwarber and Ranger Suarez among the pending free agents, with Zack Wheeler facing a long road back from surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome, with Thomson’s future on the bench uncertain, it may have felt like more than just a defeated reliever being walked off the field Thursday.
Contact Matthew De George at mdegeorge@delcotimes.com.
