The Phillies walked off the field at Citizens Bank Park on Monday night in a swirl of emotions, none of them good.
They had let Game 2 of the NLDS get away, despite manager Dave Roberts and the Los Angeles Dodgers serving them up a fair amount of chances to take it.
There was shock, disbelief, frustration, and anger that also poured down heavily from a South Philly crowd of 45,000-plus, where each and every person there knew that the club should be a lot better than this.
But the Phillies were down 2-0 all the same in the best-of-five series, and on the brink of elimination heading to Los Angeles for a do-or-die Game 3.
For Kyle Schwarber and Ranger Suárez, there was a dark cloud of uncertainty hovering over them, too.
Schwarber, as the star slugger, and Suárez, as the unshakable lefty, have both been key parts of this era of Philies baseball. But they're both eligible for free agency after this season, and are both expected to get relatively increased pay days, though with no guarantees that they will be from the Phillies.
There was a real chance that Monday night could've been the last time that Schwarber and Suárez stepped off the home field in red-pinstriped uniforms. There was a real chance that Wednesday night in L.A. could've been their last games as Phillies.
Instead, they bought themselves, and the club, one more day.
Schwarber homered twice in Wednesday night's 8-2 Game 3 blowout, first with a cathartic 455-foot missile of a solo shot and then with a two-run bomb that carried just enough over the right-field wall in the eighth to effectively put the game away.
Suárez, who had been made available out of the bullpen all series, finally took over in the third, in a baton pass from two hard-fought but pivotal shutout innings from Aaron Nola as the starter, and came up clutch.
L.A.'s Tommy Edman launched Suárez's first pitch into the seats for the night's first run, but after that, the lefty settled in.
He cleared through five innings on 72 pitches, striking out four with just a walk and that lone homer allowed.
It got dicey in spots, but Suárez's effort kept the Phillies out of trouble and bought them time, first for their star bats at the top to finally wake up, but then to maybe find a new lease on life and turn the tide on this series, too.
At the least, Suárez bought them one more day.
"He pitched his butt off," Nola said afterward (via NBC Sports Philadelphia's postgame show).
And Schwarber? He led a long-awaited charge at the plate. Thursday night for Game 4 will be the tell of whether it's too little too late, but for now, they do seem to have something.
The Phillies' top half of the lineup had been dormant through Games 1 and 2, and through the early part of Game 3, that didn't look to be changing against Dodgers starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
Then Schwarber got the barrel around on a 2-0 fastball left up in the zone. Everyone in Dodger Stadium knew he had crushed it the second they heard the crack, it was just a matter of how far it was going to sail.
But the bigger thing for the Phillies: It tied the game, it snapped a major slump for their leading power bat, and it might've gotten the dominoes to start falling.
Trea Turner had been struggling, too, but went 3-for-5 ahead of Schwarber in the leadoff spot on Wednesday night, and Bryce Harper went 2-for-4 with a run scored on some heads-up base-running, while Alec Bohm went 2-for-3 with two walks in the No. 4 spot.
Once they had forced Yamamoto out in the fifth, and finally got to lay into a suspect Dodgers bullpen – albeit backed by Roberts' curious decision to leave the 37-year-old Clayton Kershaw out there for two late innings of relief – the Phillies' top hitters had finally made a dent in the series and went 9-for-16 combined.
It started with Schwarber when he finally got a hold of that first postseason home run. The Phillies' October hopes were always going to begin and end with him, Harper, Turner, and then on down to Bohm and J.T. Realmuto being on at the plate, too.
They weren't through the first two games in Philly, and it put them on the brink.
They figured something out Wednesday night in L.A., and it bought them one more day.
They'll be playing for one more Thursday night in Game 4.
"That's why it's just such a fun format," Schwarber said after Wednesday night's win (again via NBC Sports Philly). "You're just grinding, you're trying to find a way to win a baseball game, and something's going to work out, or sometimes it's not going to work out.
"But at the end of the day, the preparation is still going to be there, the intensity is gonna be there, and the buy-in from everyone's going to be there."
And for right now, the Phillies are still there, thanks to two names who don't know how many more days with them they might have left.
They know for sure, though, they have one more.
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