When Brandon Marsh cut through the wind to send a 96 mph Spencer Strider fastball over the wall in left-center field and give his team a two-run lead Friday afternoon, it looked like it would be the Phillies' day.
They were nine outs away from securing an Opening Day win over the Braves team they expect to compete with for the next six months, three short innings from getting off to the fast start they prioritized after beginning last season 0-4.
Manager Rob Thomson turned to the bullpen in the seventh inning after Zack Wheeler's six goose eggs and what followed looked more like the Brandon Workman-Heath Hembree experience of 2020 than the revamped Phillies relief corps that was ranked last week by MLB Network as baseball's best.
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The reliable Matt Strahm, who had a 3.29 ERA last season with 11.1 strikeouts per nine innings and just 2.2 walks, surrendered hits in the seventh inning to three of the first four Braves he faced, two of them doubles. The score was tied by the time he exited.
Jeff Hoffman put out the seventh-inning fire, but Jose Alvarado doused gasoline onto it in the eighth. Alvarado allowed a double, two singles, walked two and was charged with five earned runs in just two-thirds of an inning, the worst outing of his career. Things spiraled out of control for the Phillies, who lost, 9-3.
Alvarado and Strahm were two of the Phils' most consistent performers last season and are two huge pieces of their pitching staff moving forward. Both pitched well in camp, particularly Strahm, who ended it by signing an extension that could be worth up to $15 million over two additional years if his 2026 option vests.
Bullpen performance is volatile. It's similar to being an NFL kicker. You come into pressure-packed moments and are expected to deliver. When you do, it's typically unnoticed. When you don't, it's the opposite.
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"That's just baseball," Alvarado said afterward. "I don't want to think about anything that happened today. Today is over. Get ready for tomorrow.
"For me, I don't think about who's hitting, what team's coming in. I don't think about that. My challenge every time when I come into the game is to hit the target. Today's over, be ready for tomorrow."
Alvarado used to be anything but consistent. The Rays traded him to the Phillies in December 2020 because he couldn't throw enough strikes. That carried over into his first season with the Phils, 2021, when Alvarado impressed in flashes but walked 47 batters in 55⅔ innings.
He was sent to the minors around Memorial Day 2022 and has been a completely different pitcher since that experience, posting a 1.49 ERA and 1.02 WHIP with 128 strikeouts and 30 walks over a span of nearly two years.
"Looked like he just couldn't get a feel for the fastball," Thomson said. "Maybe it was the cold weather, I'm not sure. Really, it was uncharacteristic of our entire bullpen the last three innings. A lot of walks. Just didn't seem to have a feel for throwing strikes.
"They'll be better, I'm not concerned about that."
The game, and Alvarado's 67.50 early-season ERA, would have looked much different had Connor Brogdon been able to record the final out of the eighth inning. He entered with the bases loaded, two outs and the Phillies down two runs, a manageable deficit. He couldn't throw strikes. Back-to-back walks with a wild pitch mixed in resulted in two more Braves runs. Then Matt Olson put things out of reach with a three-run double.
Brogdon was a bubble candidate to make the Phillies' Opening Day bullpen, but one open spot turned into three when Orion Kerkering was left off the initial roster as he works back from an illness and Taijuan Walker was placed on the injured list, thereby shifting Spencer Turnbull from long man to temporary fifth starter.
As recently as October 2022, Brogdon was on the mound for the Phillies in enormous spots picking up key outs. He had a 3.27 ERA that regular season, then struck out 13 over 8⅓ scoreless innings from Game 3 of the NLDS against the Braves through Game 5 of the World Series in Houston.
He took a step back in 2023. He was hit hard last Opening Day in Texas, then settled in through mid-May before things turned dramatically. He was sent to Triple A and didn't pitch well enough to put himself back on the big-league club's radar.
The Phillies know he has ability, specifically because of his changeup, but this was the last thing he needed.
"He's got to be able to throw strikes, that's for sure, and be able to land his changeup," Thomson said. "We've got some work to do there."
As always, there's work to do in multiple areas. The Phillies chased more pitches on Opening Day than a team that spoke all spring about reducing their chase rate would want. Spencer Strider can do that to you, but they also expanded against guys like Joe Jimenez and Pierce Johnson. Trea Turner, who led the majors with 23 errors a year ago, made an error on a routine groundball to short, forcing Wheeler to throw extra pitches under duress.
"It was tough. It was a tough day to pitch, the wind and cold, the ball's slick, all of the above," Wheeler said. "It's Game 1. They know what they're doing out there. I have all the faith in the world."
Under normal circumstances, Thomson's hook for Wheeler would have been Topics A, B and C postgame. The Phillies' ace was locked in and had thrown 89 pitches. But it's March 29 and managers tend not to push their starters to 100 pitches this early. Wheeler also didn't make a full complement of starts in spring training. He missed one because of the birth of his third child.
Most, if not all current managers would have made the same decision.
"I didn't go that long in spring," Wheeler said when asked if he thought he should have been left in the game. "It's start 1. You don't want to press on the gas too much. It's a long season so (Thomson's) got to keep that in mind, and I didn't get the buildup I normally would have. I missed a start, probably would have been up to 80 or 90 pitches and could've gone a little bit deeper today."
As Wheeler and his teammates reiterated, it's just one game, albeit with outsized importance because it's the first. The Phillies will be right back at Citizens Bank Park on Saturday morning looking to even a series against a stacked Braves team they know they can hang with. They'll probably stay away from Alvarado, who threw 30 pitches, until at least Sunday.
"The place was rocking, everyone was super excited," Bryce Harper said. "We had the lead, had a chance, it just didn't happen."