Strahm 'gut punched' by backbreaking HR in Phils' Game 1 loss

PHILADELPHIA -- Matt Strahm couldn’t believe it.

He shook his head as Teoscar Hernández rounded the bases in the seventh inning on Saturday night at Citizens Bank Park. A few minutes later, he shouted into his glove as he walked off the field.

“I got gut punched on missing two pitches,” Strahm said.

He had nearly cleaned up a nasty mess in the Phillies’ 5-3 loss to the Dodgers in Game 1 of the National League Division Series. He entered the game with runners on first and second and no outs, but he struck out Shohei Ohtani looking on a fastball and got Mookie Betts to pop out on the infield.

If he could only get Hernández.

Strahm missed with a first-pitch cutter for a ball. Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto then set up inside for a 1-0 fastball, but Strahm threw the pitch on the outer half of the plate. Hernández sent the pitch to right-center field for a stunning three-run home run to give the Dodgers a two-run lead, and eventually a 1-0 lead in the best-of-five series.

“This was never going to be easy,” Kyle Schwarber said.

The Phillies will spend Sunday looking at what went wrong, knowing they must win Game 2 on Monday night if they stand any chance of extending their season. In Division Series with the current 2-2-1 format, teams to win Game 1 on the road have advanced 34 of 46 times (73.9 percent).

“We’ve just got to dust it off,” Realmuto said. “It’s a five-game series. There’s still plenty of opportunity for us to go out and play good baseball. We’ve got to refocus tomorrow, watch video, see things we could’ve done differently and then come out and play better on Monday.”

The Phillies must reverse a troubling trend in a ballpark that an opposing coach once called “four hours of hell” in the postseason. They have lost four of their last five postseason games at Citizens Bank Park, dating to Game 6 of the 2023 NL Championship Series.

“It’s up to us to make the adjustments and go out there and feel like we’re doing everything possible that we can to put ourselves in position to win a baseball game,” Schwarber said.

The Phillies took a 3-0 lead against Dodgers right-hander Shohei Ohtani in the second inning. Alec Bohm walked and Brandon Marsh singled to start the inning. Realmuto’s triple to right-center field scored both runners to make it 2-0. He scored on Harrison Bader’s sacrifice fly.

But they couldn’t add on. The top of the Phillies’ lineup -- Trea Turner, Schwarber and Bryce Harper -- went a combined 1-for-11 with one walk and six strikeouts in Game 1. The team was 1-for-7 with runners in scoring position.

“We missed some pitches over the plate, chasing a little bit,” Harper said. “But I think just missing pitches over the plate that we should’ve done damage on. Just didn’t get it done.”

“I’ll be fine,” said Schwarber, who went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts. “It’s just one game. This is the postseason. This isn’t about personal. This is about the whole team. And now it’s about Monday, you’re back to grinding and feeling like you’re going to put together competitive at-bats for the team.”

Hernández didn’t miss his pitch, but it shouldn’t have gotten to that point. David Robertson got the final out of the sixth after Cristopher Sánchez had allowed two runs to cut the Phillies’ lead to one. Robertson started the seventh, but he put the first two runners on base.

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“I put him in a terrible situation,” Robertson said. “Just poor pitching on my part. He almost did the unthinkable and got out of it.”

The way Bader pursued it, it almost looked like he might settle underneath Hernández’s ball. But it kept carrying before finally falling amongst stunned Phillies fans.

“Off the bat, I didn’t think it was going to be a homer,” Strahm said.

“It was loud out there,” Bader said. “I couldn’t really hear the barrel or anything. I was just playing the ball. He backspun it really well. He’s known to do that obviously. He’s an amazing player. And obviously when I ran out of room to try to run it down, that was it.”

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But Realmuto was there. He knew.

“You know, off his bat, it sounded like trouble to me,” Realmuto said.

There was talk after the game that Dodgers center fielder Andy Pages, who was on second base, might have been signaling Strahm’s pitches to Hernández at the plate. Strahm dismissed the suggestion. He said he grips his pitches with his fingers together. The only thing that changes is where Strahm grips the ball along the seams.

“If he can see that …” Strahm said.

It’s more likely that Pages was signaling something about where Realmuto was setting up.

No matter. The Phillies scored three early runs off Ohtani, who went 0-for-4 with four strikeouts. They had a three-run lead in the sixth.

They could not hold it.

“If we would’ve gone out and won three games, great,” Schwarber said. “But we’ve got to come out Monday and try to find a way to put together a competitive series and go from there. That’s what it is at the end of the day for us. There’s five games for a reason.”