PHILADELPHIA — When Merrill Kelly stepped to the podium in 2023, the schadenfreude was about as high as the confidence in Philadelphia.
Kelly was scheduled to start Game 2 of the NLCS for the Arizona Diamondbacks. The journeyman righty fielded a routine question about the atmosphere at Citizens Bank Park, tossed an answer casually to first base and then watched a fanbase that assumed it was on its way to a second straight World Series erupt.
“I think we’ll be all right,” Kelly said, as a veteran of the World Baseball Classic and the KBO Korean Series. He followed it by saying that, “I haven’t obviously heard this place on the field, but I would be very surprised if it trumped that Venezuela game down in Miami,” during the WBC.
Kelly was right. Not immediately, since a day later he didn’t survive the sixth inning, the Phillies leading 6-0 after six innings to win and take a 2-0 lead/perceived stranglehold on the series. But Kelly would be proved accurate eventually, both individually and for others.
Since that flight to Arizona, the mystique of Citizens Bank Park as a difficult place to pitch has been shattered. That has torpedoed two seasons of playoff hopes and, entering Monday, had a third teetering on the brink.
Much as the marketing materials have grown polished and the decibel meters remain tested on a nightly basis, the on-field results have diminished since 2022, when teams dreaded visiting South Philadelphia.
The Phillies won their first six playoff games at the Bank in 2022, before the Astros combined no-hitter in the World Series, then lost Game 5 to bow out of the series in six. In 2023, they likewise won the first six.
But since, the Phillies lost twice to Arizona to complete an NLCS collapse one win shy of the Fall Classic, split with the Mets in last year’s NLDS loss and dropped Saturday’s Game 1, 5-3, to the Dodgers. That’s four losses in five games, with 15 runs scored, almost half of them from the 7-6 Game 2 win over the Mets last year.
Most vexing is the part that Kelly could directly attest to: Citizens Bank Park in October has not been the toughest place for opposing starting pitchers. In order:
• Shohei Ohtani, Game 1 in 2025: 6 innings, 3 earned runs, 9 strikeouts
• Luis Severino, Game 2 in 2024: 6 innings, 3 ER, 0 walks and 7 Ks
• Kodai Senga, Game 1 in 2024: 2 innings as a planned opener, but with David Peterson, the Mets’ first two pitchers allows 2 hits and 1 ER in 5 innings
• Brandon Pfaadt, Game 7 in 2023: 4 innings, 2 ER as a rookie, stellar given the circumstances
• Merrill Kelly, Game 6 in 2023: 5 innings, 1 ER, 8 Ks
That’s a far cry from what the Phillies did to Bryce Elder in 2023 or Spencer Strider and Mike Clevinger in 2022, when starting pitchers had a reason to be fearful to pitch here. It’s not even how they terrorized Zac Gallen in Game 1 of the NLCS.
That isn’t a commentary on the fans, necessarily. But it does reflect how the Phillies aren’t using the atmospheric advantages that all those Red October merch sales could confer.
“We’ve dealt with that before,” Thomson said of deflating moments like Teoscar Hernadez’s 3-run home run Saturday. “We’ve dealt with negative response before, too. So that’s just the passion of the fans. And I thought they were great the other night. I really did. I thought they were boisterous, pretty much, throughout.”
The trends are particularly troublesome with Blake Snell due to pitch Monday night. Snell is one of the better postseason starters in the league, a career 3.23 ERA in 55.2 postseason innings. He’s gotten through at least five innings in seven of his last 10 postseason starts, including five effective innings against the Phillies in Game 2 of the 2022 NLCS in San Diego.
Snell went seven innings to control Game 1 of the Wild Card series against Cincinnati, scattering four hits and two earned runs.
What he can do is walk people. Every year since 2021, he’s been no better than the 30th percentile in baseball in walk rate. He thrives on generating chase, that old Phillies bugaboo, which comes at the cost of rising pitch counts. It’s part of the reason why he’s never glimpsed 200 innings in a season.
“Just got to be aware of what’s going on,” Thomson said. “Our focus is controlling the strike zone, and that’s it.”
That hits at the central struggle that the Phillies face in trying to get back into this series. Much as the venom of the fans can set a starting pitcher on edge, it’s up to the guys with the bats to knock him out of the game.
There’s no velocity of rally-towel twirling that can do that for them. The Phillies had Ohtani in danger in Game 1, posting a three-spot in the second inning. But the reigning NL MVP recovered to retire 10 straight. The Phillies put just seven balls in play over his last four innings on the mound.
Less than chasing the high of 2022, the Phillies have to get back to doing what made them successful then: Working counts, not trying to do too much — “passing the baton” was the operative motto — and making life miserable for visitors.
Doesn’t fit on a T-shirt, but might be much more operable.
Contact Matthew De George at mdegeorge@delcotimes.com
