Game 4 Loss Was the Final Gut Punch of this Phillies Era

It’s taken me a full 24 hours to digest and process what happened in Game 4 of the NLDS. I purposefully told myself that I wasn’t going to go onto social media because I knew what was coming. It was going to be a tsunami of shocked and hurt Phillies fans, upset about the way the season ended.

I can’t lie, in the moment I screamed out “What the hell are you doing?!?!” as if Orion Kerkering could hear me. But what I saw immediately after was a heartbreaking moment of a 24-year-old pitcher who panicked in the most inopportune of moments and lost track of the situation. Watching so many of his teammates and manager surround him with support was something that will be the image I keep in my memory of that moment.

I think most of Philadelphia knew that beating the Dodgers twice at home was not going to be an easy task, and even the most optimistic Phils fan had to know that the season-ending Tuesday night was a distinct possibility; however, after an intense extra-innings game, to lose in a manner like that is shocking and has elicited a huge response.

I want to remind everyone of something — baseball is incredibly hard, and we saw one of the best pitcher’s duels we have ever seen, and if we remove our allegiance for the visiting team from it, Thursday night’s game is what playoff baseball is all about.

I didn’t sit from the first pitch until the run scored in the 11th. Intense, crisp, and all-encompassing, that game had it all. Not to mention, the Flyers opened their season Thursday night, and the Eagles were playing the Giants, yet this game was the centerpiece in most homes, mine included.

Cristopher Sanchez is Almost the Ace of the Phillies’ Staff

Let me explain that. He absolutely shoved Thursday night. He was completely in command of the game. Tyler Glasnow was mowing down Phillies batters, but Sanchez was matching him inning for inning. While they were both in the game, it was a masterclass on how to be a dominant pitcher in the playoffs. Both were cooking from the beginning, and all hitters looked foolish at the plate.

That was until the bottom of the 7th inning. Nick Castellanos just gave the Phils a 1-0 lead in a game that felt like that could be enough, given the way Sanchez was pitching. He came out and buried Will Smith, then got Alex Call to a 2-2 count, and painted the inside corner for what had been a strike all game. Sanchez started to walk off the mound, and even JT.. Realmuto almost threw the ball to third, yet home plate umpire Mark Wegner disagreed that he didn’t execute the perfect pitch and called it ball three.

After that, he was unable to refocus, and walked Call, and the biggest October pain in the ass on the Dodgers lineup, Kike Hernandez hit a single, and it forced Rob Thomson to come get his big ace. That missed call loomed huge because it should have been 2 outs with nobody on when Hernandez came to the plate. However, that missed call by Wegner shattered the focus of Sanchez. If you look back at his starts where he was dealing and then just couldn’t get outs, a pattern emerges where there was a call that turned the tide. Just like on Thursday night, his focus was gone after the blown call.

The reason I say that he’s “Almost the Ace” is simple here: Can you imagine Zack Wheeler losing focus like that? Hell, I would even bring Aaron Nola, Ranger Suarez, or Jesus Luzardo up as well. None of them would lose focus after a bad call. I’m not knocking Sanchez here, but if there is one thing he can improve on from this year, it is working on having a short memory in these situations. He has consistently improved since his rookie year to be who I truly think is a top 3 pitcher in Cy Young award voting this season. I just hope that this is one of the things he can improve on.

The Heartbreak Kids

The Phils’ offense was heartbreaking this whole series. Even in the 8-2 win in Game 3, it was bittersweet at best because they finally played up to their ability, and that made the disappearing act in the second half of Game 1 and all of Game 2 feel that much more hurtful in retrospect.

Watching them hit off of Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave us the feeling that they were invincible. While they were clubbing Clayton Kershaw, I got caught up in the hype as well. It was a catharsis for Phillies fans who could only sit by and watch Dodgers pitching carve up the lineup for the majority of 2 games at Citizens Bank Park.

Going into Game 4, we had no reason to believe that the Phillies weren’t going to continue mashing on Glasnow. After all, they handled Yamamoto the night before, and he is part of that Cy Young award trio, I spoke of earlier, along with the Pirates’ Paul Skenes. If they could pick apart Yamamoto, surely Glasnow would be ripe for the picking. The reason that the Phils had success off of Yamamoto is 2 fold: they were hunting the fastball, and not missing on it. More importantly, they were looking to make contact and searching for base hits. When the Phillies have played their worst baseball this season, it’s when they are playing from behind, and everyone tries going into what I call “Hero Mode,” and that is where everyone tries to be the hero and hit home runs. Sometimes that works well, but trying to hit a home run in every at-bat isn’t going to happen, and sometimes you need to take what the pitchers give you. That was what they did against Yamamoto, and it worked to perfection. In Game 4, the swings from the top of the first were trying to hit more balls off the pavilion roofs at Dodger Stadium.

I’d like to prove my point. There are 2 series I look back on this season as the worst baseball played by the 2025 Philadelphia Phillies was the series they played in San Francisco and the series they played in Cincinnati. In both series, they won a game, largely with power coming to the forefront. In San Francisco, they were outlasted by the Giants in game 1, and game 2 will be remembered for Patrick Bailey‘s walk-off inside-the-park home run. The next day, they scored 13 runs, but they had already lost the series. In Cincy, they came in off what I think is their best offensive series of the year. They won the first game of the series, but in games 2 and 3, they ran into absolute buzzsaws in Brady Singer and Hunter Greene. But what truly has been a pattern all year is that when they string together some solid games where the long ball is there, they buy into the hype and start searching for it. The series in Houston gets a dishonorable mention in this, too.

The juxtaposition to this was the series against the Texas Rangers and the Seattle Mariners. The reason these series were so successful is that everyone was hitting, the team was getting base hits and working counts, putting themselves in advantageous counts, and getting the pitch they wanted to hit. Then they delivered on what the pitcher gave them. It wasn’t trying to go yard with every swing. In Texas, especially, they put on a clinic for the fans in Dallas. In 2 of the 3 games that weekend, every Phillie who came to the plate had at least one hit. That is beyond impressive in today’s game, and that provided the cushion for the pitchers. Against the Mariners, it was the same Philly show, only they were able to get the long ball off the Mariners, who were at the beginning of their ascent to the American League West as well, making that series even more impressive.

A Change in Philosophy is Needed for 2026

This is a tough one because I don’t specifically know what this means, other than the Phillies need to look at what is working and do more of that. The more rigid they have been with their philosophy, the more one-dimensional they are, and the easier they are to beat. This is something they need to avoid in 2026, and avoid it at all costs. I know that many in the fanbase want Thomson to be the fall guy here, and there are plenty of decisions he made that caused me indigestion all season, but he’s human, and when it comes down to it, his decisions may have lost the team some games, but his decisions won more than they lost. In this series, his decisions in games 3 and 4 were fantastic. He pulled the right buttons and pulled the right levers in almost every situation. We all questioned the start for Nola over Suarez, but that was the exact right call. He played game 4 very well from a strategy perspective.

The fact of the matter is, Topper can’t grab a bat and hit; he doesn’t have a 97 mph sinker, and he can’t go out and field the ball. That is on his team to go do, and his veteran team should be able to do that. There is one person who I think needs to be relieved of duty, that is, hitting coach Kevin Long. When the Phillies’ offense disappears like it has for several series this season, you have to look at the person in charge of the hitting philosophy and the coaching staff to adhere to that philosophy. Topper has said that he trusts Long and the veterans of the team to get themselves ready for every game. But this team is too talented to have series like they did in Houston, San Francisco, and Cincinnati. They can do better, and that starts with the coaching, and I think Dave Dombrowski has to replace Long with someone who can better prepare the Phils’ hitters to be consistent and see more pitches. This season, the Phillies saw an average of 4.6 pitches per at-bat according to Baseball Savant, which put them in the middle of the pack in baseball. Wildly unacceptable, especially when you have the batting champion on the team.

With the number of key free agents the Phils have this season, Dombrowski has his work cut out for him. Suarez, Realmuto, Harrison Bader, Walker Buehler, Max Kepler, oh and Kyle Schwarber are all at the top of the list of Phils who are free agents in one way or another.

We have all off-season to talk hot stove, but one thing is for sure: the Phils will have a new look next year. I just hope the new-look Phils can play consistent baseball all season. That is the one thing that has been missing in this era of Phillies baseball. Maybe baseball now is all or nothing, but we’ve been trying that and it has left us all heartbroken, and the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, according to Albert Einstein, and the time has come to listen to that advice. I don’t think a rebuild is the answer, but a retooling and a new offensive strategy certainly is. This heartbreak can’t continue.

Get New Articles Emailed Right To Your Inbox: