MLB Playoffs 2023: How this October delivered two Game 7s،
PHILADELPHIA — Every year, October baseball is a treat, a hodgepodge of drama, intrigue, strategy, excitement and frayed nerves. Games 7 takes each of these elements and energizes them. Sports exist for series that go the distance. And this month of October offered a pair.
Two days. Two games 7.
Early Monday night, the Arizona Diamondbacks handed the Philadelphia Phillies their first home loss of this postseason, booking a Game 7 of the National League Championship Series on Tuesday at Citizens Bank Park. While the Diamondbacks were looking forward to extending their season with a 5-1 victory, the Texas Rangers were shutting down the Houston Astros in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series, an 11-4 drubbing which kept the hopes of the franchise’s first game alive. championship in 63 years of existence.
As little theater as the Wild Card and Division Series rounds provided this year, the LCS made up for it. And Tuesday’s affair, featuring the star-laden Phillies looking to make up for their World Series loss last season against the “disjointed,” “gritty” — in their words — Diamondbacks attempting to turn an 84-win season into championship, presents a tantalizing story, regardless of outcome, unfolding in real time.
This is baseball at its best. Of course, games are always binary – win or lose – but 7 games offer a variation: win or go home. They’re not rare, exactly, but they’re rare enough that the Phillies, who played their first game in 1883 and have played more than 20,000 games in their history, have never been to a Game 7 — until now.
The last time both full-season championship series went to Game 7 was 2004, and both series were all-time. (This also happened during the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season.) It shows just how special these playoffs have become, a consideration that hasn’t escaped the Diamondbacks, who have already had two playoff champions division (the Milwaukee Brewers and the Los Angeles Dodgers). ) and aim to take down a Phillies team that entered the NLCS as a distinct favorite.
“It might go well, and we’ll celebrate, and it might go bad, and it might even be my fault,” Diamondbacks closer Paul Sewald said. “But that’s why you play. To play this month. To play Game 7.”
It’s the biggest stage, and the stage for indelible moments, as the Rangers and Astros illustrated Monday night.
That’s where Texas outfielder Adolis Garcia capped the series of his life with a game that etched him into the history books. Three days ago, a 99 mph fastball from Astros reliever Bryan Abreu hit Garcia in the shoulder two innings after he punctuated a three-run homer with a lazy-caliber trot around the bases. The Rangers slugger’s coda in Game 7 included four hits in five at-bats, a pair of home runs and five RBIs.
This is where Bruce Bochy solidified his case for the Hall of Fame. The Rangers manager, who came out of retirement to take over a team that lost 94 games last season and 102 the year before, is now 6-0 in winner-take-all games, including three Game 7s. is the first manager to win an LCS with three different organizations. He was the perfect shepherd for the team that spent $500 million on a middle-of-the-road infield in free agency before the 2022 season and another $250 million on pitching this winter and SO obtained Max Scherzer and Jordan Montgomery, who together covered the first five innings of Game 7, at the trade deadline.
Each team’s path to Game 7 is different. The Rangers relied on their sticks; the Astros seemed to survive through sheer willpower. Philadelphia rode its stars, Arizona its moxie and, perhaps more unexpectedly than on the other side of the bracket, their NLCS matchup also produced some gripping baseball.
Game 6 showed the Diamondbacks at their best: hitting homers and stealing bases and getting five fantastic innings from starter Merrill Kelly and four more from a once-maligned bullpen that came together when it mattered most. Tonight, the math for the Diamondbacks is simple: score early and silence the raucous Bank crowd. In this series, when the Phillies get on the board in the first inning, they are 3-0; when held scoreless, they are 0-3.
“That’s what we have to do all the time,” Arizona shortstop Geraldo Perdomo said. “The first two games were so loud, and I think [Monday] we responded early. …In any stadium, when the opposing team scores first, the crowd — doesn’t make as much noise as it did at the beginning. This is what we must do to [Game 7]Also.”
Philadelphia won’t make things easy. The same mashers who hit 10 homers in this series – Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber, Trea Turner, JT Realmuto and Nick Castellanos – will look to add to the total. Phillies starter Ranger Suarez faced D-backs rookie Brandon Pfaadt in a brilliantly pitched Game 3, pitching 5⅓ scoreless innings to Pfaadt’s 5⅔. No matter how much of a gap there may be on paper, the NLCS participants are about as balanced as they are on the field.
And now it comes back to Game 7. When Perdomo thinks about Game 7, he remembers the winter championship battles between Aguilas and Licey in his native Dominican Republic, which rivaled the national equivalent of Yankees-Red Sox. Pfaadt thinks back to just a year ago, when he started and won Game 7 for the Triple-A Pacific Coast League title.
But this? This is the big leagues. It’s for a chance at the World Series. If stars are made in October, legends are made in Game 7.
No, Game 7 won’t prove anything concrete that the top six haven’t already. However, he will send one team to Arlington, Texas, for the first game of the World Series on Friday and the other home for the winter. The stakes are almost too colossal for a single game, and yet those stakes are precisely what makes Game 7 so exceptional.
That’s why we’re watching. A Game 7 is in the books and another is coming at 8 p.m. ET. Nothing turns the stomach, causes nausea, and triggers dopamine like that.
Isn’t that great?
