Daily News | Reasons to believe in a Phillies Game 4 clinch: Bryce Harper, home cooking, history and more
They need to get it done in Game 4. That’s all there is to say. The Phillies have some room to breathe. They’d be wise not to use it.
On Saturday afternoon, the Phillies will have an electric home crowd at their back and their most favorable pitching matchup of the series on the mound. Almost as important as what they can clinch is what they can avoid: a Saturday night flight back to Atlanta, a do-or-die Game 5, a top-tier Braves starter who figures to be a heck of a lot sharper this time around, all of this with the Phillies’ fate in the hands of a No. 3 starter who recorded just 10 outs in Game 1.
With apologies to Rhys Hoskins, whose three-run home run and emphatic one-handed bat spike will forever exist as one of the iconic moments in Phillies postseason history, the performance that bodes most well for Game 4 was the one turned in by Harper. The echoes from Hoskins’ third-inning blast had barely subsided when Harper stepped to the plate and launched a 400-plus-foot blast into the right-center seats.
The veteran righty was an improbable Cy Young candidate not long ago. This year, he’s been well short of that. Still a plenty capable No. 4 starter, more so than any of the options that the Phillies are considering to throw on their behalf. But in five starts against Morton this season, the Phillies have scored 17 runs, with three home runs, 11 walks and 31 hits in 26⅓ innings.
In Game 3, the trouble began on the very first pitch of the game, when Bryson Stott misjudged a routine chopper by Ronald Acuña Jr. and didn’t even get leather on the ball as it bounced over his glove and through the left side of the infield. It continued in the third, when Alec Bohm one-hopped a throw to first after making a nice pick of a sharp bouncer off the bat of Acuña. It was a bad throw but took a clean bounce that plenty of first basemen could have fielded.
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