NLCS: Bryce Harper Leads Phillies to World Series Win
By Nate Silver:
What a season: The Phillies entered the postseason as the NL’s second seed and played the Los Angeles Dodgers for the right to play the San Francisco Giants in the NL Championship Series. The Dodgers would go on to win the NL West and advance to the World Series, while the Phillies finished third in their division and played the St. Louis Cardinals in the NLCS, where they would win, to advance to the World Series. That was a season full of excitement and drama, and all the more so because of a number of unique events. I’m going to give you a timeline of some of the story lines in the Phillies’ season, starting with their season opening sweep of the Pittsburgh Pirates.
October 2:
The Phillies beat the Pirates, 6-2, at the Citizens Bank Park.
Phillies vs Pirates
The Phillies are playing their second consecutive day of a doubleheader. They took the field first, and in the bottom of the first, they got a three-run homer from Charlie Morton that made the score 7-2. The game went back and forth for the rest of the game with the Phillies holding a 14-9 lead, but the Pirates tied it at 14-14 in the sixth. The Phillies then won the seventh, when Jimmy Rollins hit a two-run walk-off home run. The Phillies went into the top of the eighth with a 12-8 lead, but the Pirates loaded the bases with no outs, and Scott Eyre hit a line drive to shallow left field that was caught by Chase Utley. The Phillies tied it up at 12-all, and the Pirates lost it in the bottom of the tenth.
This is a strange year for first starts of the season. In the majors, there are 44 games in which the starters started in the first inning, and only seven of those 44 games ended with a victory, the lone exception being the Phillies’ 7-5 victory over the Dodgers in an extra-inning affair on August 24. As for the majors, the AL East leaders, the New York Yankees, opened the season with seven more
