October 04, 2025
Eric Hartline/Imagn Images
Teoscar Hernández rounds the bases after hitting a three-run homer that gave the Dodgers the lead over the Phillies on Saturday night in Game 1 of the NLDS.
Saturday night, for a while, looked like it was going to be a statement.
Cristopher Sánchez was carving up Shohei Ohtani, the hitter, and the defending champion Dodgers with his changeup, and J.T. Realmuto led a charge with a triple to generate a few early runs off Shohei Ohtani, the pitcher.
But then they got stuck in place.
Ohtani, on the mound, settled into a rhythm and kept the Phillies to just those three early runs while he powered his way through six innings.
He didn't fare well at the plate, but eventually, L.A. got on the board. Kike Hernández chased Sánchez with a two-out, two-run double in the sixth, then in the seventh, with two outs again, Teoscar Hernández flipped the lead for the Dodgers with a Matt Strahm fastball that he launched into the seats for a three-run homer.
Game 1 of the NLDS slipped away from the Phillies in a 5-3 loss.
Another electric Red October crowd at Citizens Bank Park was ready to see, what they still hope will be, a long postseason run start off with a bang. Instead, the Phils are down 1-0 in the best-of-five series, and with long-lingering concerns creeping back.
How much can you trust this bullpen after they let their first high-leverage situation in the postseason go? The bats went quiet again, and after the Dodgers had reached into their own suspect group of relievers, the Phils let a bases-loaded opportunity fall flat in the eighth. Is that ugly habit rearing its head again, too?
Game 2 is Monday night back in South Philly. Jesús Luzardo has the start against L.A.'s Blake Snell.
The pressure's on again. Here's how it got here...
The Phillies were trying to hang on, but were playing with fire as they pushed late into Saturday night.
A 3-0 lead they had pieced together over Ohtani in the second inning had shrunk to just a run when Sánchez ran out of gas and got pulled after what otherwise would've been a solid 5.2 innings.
David Robertson got called out of the bullpen and got that last out to leave the Phillies up, 3-2, after six, but he went back out for the seventh and fell into trouble.
The right-hander let up a single to Andy Pages, then hit Will Smith with a pitch with no one out.
Manager Rob Thomson had to get him out of there, and looked to lefty Matt Strahm to get the Phillies out of the jam.
He almost did.
Strahm sent Othani down looking for the star's fourth strikeout of the night by that point, got Mookie Betts to pop out, but then in need of just one more, Hernández launched a 1-0 fastball into the seats for the three-run homer and the L.A. lead, 5-3.
TEOSCAR HERNÁNDEZ!@DODGERS LEAD! #NLDS pic.twitter.com/XeygIPFj4t
— MLB (@MLB) October 5, 2025
The Phillies got burned.
A bases-loaded situation with two outs in the eighth, with Edmundo Sosa pinch-hitting against Dodgers reliever Alex Vesia, was their last real shot to rally back.
Sosa flied out to center.
Zack Wheeler was introduced, in uniform, during the pregame ceremonies, and Citizens Bank Park erupted as he emerged from the dugout steps.
Any other October, he would've been taking the mound to begin the playoff run, but circumstances – surgeries to address a blood clot and then venous thoracic outlet syndrome – dictated otherwise.
They forced Cristopher Sánchez to carry the torch as the No. 1 at the top of the rotation, too.
The breakthrough left-hander has risen to every occasion, with a changeup that only seems to get increasingly more devastating, over the past three years. On Saturday night, he did it again. Well, mostly.
On his biggest stage yet, Sánchez shut the Dodgers down through five innings to move through the game quickly.
He sat Ohtani down on three pitches, all swinging, then walked out of the opening frame clean with two strikeouts and in just nine pitches.
Cristopher Sánchez, Wicked 88mph Changeup. 👌 pic.twitter.com/bTh2luzsHs
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) October 4, 2025
Then he burnt Ohtani with two more strikeouts later on, both looking.
Sánchez's sinker set the Dodgers up, his changeup put them away, and for a while, there was just nothing L.A. could do about it.
It looked like a statement. It looked like Sánchez's coming out as a true star, and then he hit a wall after 5.2 innings.
He just couldn't get that last out in the sixth. Freddie Freeman drew a walk, Tommy Edman lined a base hit, and then Kike Hernández roped a double to left to score them both and cut a 3-0 lead the Phillies had scraped together down to just one.
#Postseason Kiké has arrived 👀
— MLB (@MLB) October 5, 2025
The @Dodgers pull within a run! #NLDS pic.twitter.com/sOl62jaS35
Thomson took the ball from Sánchez after 96 pitches. The crowd stood and applauded the lefty on the walk back to the dugout, and Robertson was called on from the bullpen to get that last out.
The veteran reliever cleaned up with a groundout of Max Muncy to keep the Phillies ahead, but only for so long.
Sánchez's final line for the night: 5.2 IP, 4 H, 2 ER, 2 BB, 8 K, 0 HR.
He was brilliant, until he wasn't, and then the Phillies slipped not long after. They couldn't recover.
Ohtani at the plate was one thing. Ohtani on the mound was another.
The last time the Phillies faced the two-way superstar as a pitcher, it was Sept. 16 in LA, the night after they had clinched the NL East.
Ohtani shut them down for five scoreless innings, but then the Dodgers went into their bullpen, and the Phillies rallied twice to pull off a 9-6 win.
The Phillies' bats came in knowing they were going to have to be patient, either to outlast Ohtani or to jump on even the slightest opening.
They found one in the second.
Alec Bohm worked a full count and drew a walk to reach first as the Phillies' first base runner of the night, then Brandon Marsh caught a fastball down the middle and rolled it into center to put two on with no out.
J.T. Realmuto stepped up, and he only needed two pitches before he saw his. Ohtani fired a 100 mile per hour fastball down the middle again, Realmuto turned on it in time to send it looping into right-center and all the way to the wall.
Bohm scored, Marsh, too, and Realmuto sprinted around the bases and slid into third for the two-run triple.
REAL-LY CLUTCH! pic.twitter.com/MNrSWIPfo6
— Philadelphia Phillies (@Phillies) October 4, 2025
The armor was pierced. The Phillies were up, 2-0. Then Harrison Bader brought Realmuto home with a sacrifice fly to the warning track in left to make it 3-0.
He just took what he could get.
"You can't really play hero ball," Bader said a few hours before Game 1. "I think keeping it super simple, take your single, having a good at-bat, passing the baton, all these little things will ultimately create a favorable result. You'll have your hero moments. Guys will have hero moments. But you're not thinking that going into the at-bat."
They had to pile up the little things, and help to ensure that Sánchez stayed clear on the other side – for as long as they could manage, that is.
Because the hero moments don't necessarily have to be at the plate either.
Into the fifth with no one out, L.A.'s Andy Pages lined a low sinker off Sánchez into right-center.
The ball was dropping quick, and a runner was already at first, but Bader ran it down from center, reached out, and gloved it for the diving catch to hold him up and get an out on the board.
WHAT A PLAY.
— Philadelphia Phillies (@Phillies) October 4, 2025
WHAT A GIFT. pic.twitter.com/8mqg6NBaUo
The Phillies were kept out of trouble, the crowd was chanting "BA-DER!!!" during an ensuing mound visit as the outfielder wiped the grass off his uniform, and Sánchez returned the favor with consecutive strikeouts to get his club through five – including a third punch out of Ohtani looking.
It looked like the Phillies would cruise, or at least everyone at the Bank was holding out hope that they would.
They couldn't.
On top of that, Bader was replaced with Nick Castellanos in the seventh inning and was later said to have exited the game with a left hamstring strain – that Thomson since corrected postgame to groin tightness.
Castellanos went 0-for-2 at the plate in Bader's spot in the order, which included grounding into a double play that ended the seventh.
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