LOS ANGELES — Many of the baseball moves that Rob Thomson tried in the first two games of the National League Division Series didn’t come off as the Phillies skipper had planned.
His pitching machinations in Wednesday’s Game 3 both looked doomed early, until the guys enacting them found a way to bounce back and execute to near perfection.
Aaron Nola tossed two scoreless innings, and Ranger Suarez followed with five stellar frames of relief to give the Phillies bats room to enliven in an 8-2 win in Game 3, staving off elimination at Dodger Stadium.
“They pretty much did exactly what we wanted,” Thomson said. “We wanted to use those guys to get as close to (closer Jhoan) Duran as we could to save some of the bullpen for tomorrow if we want.”
They did exactly that, with Duran warmed up to take down six outs, starting with a bottom of the eighth that began with 2-3-4 in the Dodgers order. But the Phillies erupted for five runs in the top of the eighth, allowing Thomson to use Orion Kerkering for the eighth and the combination of Taijuan Walker and Tanner Banks in the ninth, saving his closer for Thursday’s elimination game.
The plan crystallized after Game 2 to get Nola through the order once, then ride Suarez as deep as he could go. After both pitchers were available for emergency situations but unused, Thomson confirmed that plan with each.
Nola held up his end of the bargain, bucking the trend of a 6.01 ERA in the regular season and a 7.94 ERA in the first inning of his 15 starts.
“I just took it like another start,” Nola said. “It was another start. I knew I wasn’t going to be out there that long, so I just took it like I do every start, and it was good to throw up those two zeros.”
Nola gave up a one-out triple to Mookie Betts in the first, on a liner that Brandon Marsh dove for but couldn’t come up with. He struck out Teoscar Hernandez, hit Freddie Freeman (on a ball that seemed ticketed for the backstop to score Betts, in a lucky break for the Phillies) and froze Will Smith with a curveball for strike three.
Nola navigated a 1-2-3 second inning so quickly that when Suarez served up a first-pitch homer to Tommy Edman to give the Dodgers a 1-0 lead in the third, second thoughts might have crept in.
“Obviously I didn’t want to give up a first-pitch home run there, but sadly that’s what happened,” Suarez said via a translator. “But after it happened, I’m just like, let me settle down, I don’t want to give up another one. I don’t want to keep making mistakes. So I tried to mix my pitches better and that’s exactly what I did afterwards.”
The homer was all he allowed, underscoring why Suarez – with his 3.20 ERA in 157 innings this year – seemed the logical choice to start Game 3.
He pitched around a two-out walk by Kiké Hernandez and a Max Muncy single in the fourth by getting Andy Pages to pop out to short. He navigated Betts’ two-out single in the fifth, then induced Muncy to bounce into a double play with two on in the sixth.
The last batter he faced was Shohei Ohtani flying out to the wall in right for the final out of the seventh, a 362-footer that would’ve been out at four ballparks, including Citizens Bank Park.
“It’s nothing different,” said Suarez, who saw his career postseason ERA tick up slightly to 1.48 in 42.2 innings, three of those outings in relief. “I’ve been doing it for the past two or three years. It’s the same mentality, and it went great.”
Starting pitching has not been the Phillies problem this series, with Cristopher Sanchez going 5.2 innings and Jesus Luzardo 6 innings. The combination in Game 3 did them several outs better at a time when they most needed it.
In a game where the offense excelled with the return of a pass-the-baton philosophy to not try to do too much, the two starters basically did the pitching equivalent of it.
For Nola, it was to go all-out in his limited assignment, perhaps part of why his fastball ticked up to 95.3 miles per hour. For Suarez, it was to make sure he had no lingering frustration from not pitching in the first two games of the series – he was unequivocal that he had none – and go after hitters.
“It’s the postseason, I’ll do anything I can to help the team,” Nola said. “I knew what the situation was, and obviously excited to watch. I loved watching Ranger go out and dominate those five innings he threw and really kept us in the game, the guys exploded with the bats.”
“I always prepare myself for different types of situations,” Suarez said. “I prepare myself for being available in the game and I prepare myself mentally if the time come and I’m not pitching in those games. So that’s what I did. It didn’t get me out of the blue, so I knew that was the possibility.”
