‘Locked-in’ Castellanos rallies Phils in Game 2

Jeff Passan, ESPNOct 6, 2024, 07:43 PM ET

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PHILADELPHIA — Over 128 minutes Sunday, the most perfect encapsulation of the Philadelphia baseball experience unfolded. The beginning saw Nick Castellanos, whose mercurial play makes him the easiest target for frustrated fans, get booed during a playoff game and mutter to himself derisively about it. The end offered a lesson in how quickly disdain can turn into delirium — and how a series that looked lost can be found when a team suddenly finds itself.

In between that low moment and the high of roping a walk-off single to secure a 7-6 victory over the New York Mets and even their National League Division Series at a game apiece, Castellanos lived the life of a Philadelphia Phillie. Just 43 minutes after a 5:15 p.m. Bronx cheer from fans for laying off a slider after swinging through too many, he took a hanging one from Mets starter Luis Severino and deposited it into the left-field stands to knot the game at 3.

It wasn’t until 7:23 p.m. that Castellanos stamped Game 2 as his personal showcase, a reminder that for all of his foibles and failures, he is hitting cleanup behind Kyle Schwarber, Trea Turner and Bryce Harper because he is the guy who now has walked off five games this season, and the Phillies are still here because the Mets don’t have a monopoly on comebacks.

The latest was an instant classic that saw the Phillies fight with the moxie and resolve frequently exhibited by New York this postseason. The Mets had co-opted Philadelphia’s never-say-die attitude of recent postseasons, illustrating they weren’t just cosplaying a playoff team. Phillies fans who had seen the Mets storm to a 6-2 victory in Game 1 with a five-run eighth inning allowed the disillusionment to carry over to Sunday’s Game 2. Castellanos found himself the target, and with his teammates struggling to hit all game, he distilled the fans’ reactions into fuel.

“I was just kind of frustrated,” Castellanos said, “so I guess I locked in more.”

The powers of a locked-in Castellanos are evident in his ability to punish baseballs at the most opportune — and, quite frequently, it seems, inopportune — times. When he came up in the sixth, Phillies star Bryce Harper had just hammered a Luis Severino fastball out to center field to plate the Phillies’ first two runs. Two pitches later, Castellanos followed with his game-tying shot.

The Mets stole the lead back on a seventh-inning Brandon Nimmo home run that made it 4-3, and when they stumbled into trouble in the bottom of the inning, New York manager Carlos Mendoza called on closer Edwin Diaz. He secured the final out of the seventh and returned in the eighth to face the heart of Philadelphia’s lineup. Harper walked, Castellanos sent him to third with an inside-out single to right field and Bryson Stott, celebrating his 27th birthday, weathered a pair of 99-mph fastballs and three sliders before Diaz hung a slider and Stott sent it into the right-field corner for a triple that gave Philadelphia a lead it would stretch to 6-4.

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“Hitting a hundred is not fun,” Stott said. “But just gearing up for a hundred, you have more time to adjust. His slider is still hard. It’s (90) miles an hour. When you’re on time for a hundred, it gives you that ability to adjust to that slider, and hopefully it leaves it up.”

He did, and it left Philadelphia in prime position to secure its first postseason win and snap a three-game losing streak at Citizens Bank Park. Of course, these were the Mets. The team that comes from behind, it seems, every day. The team that tagged All-Star reliever Matt Strahm in Game 1 and proceeded to do the same in Game 2.

With one out in the top of the ninth, Francisco Lindor singled up the middle. Six pitches later, Mark Vientos, a 24-year-old third baseman playing in his first postseason, hit his second home run of the game, yanking an out-of-the-zone fastball to the left-field stands and knotting the game at 6. Once again the late innings were the Mets’ playground.

“Top to bottom over there, every at-bat I’ve seen is a selfless at-bat and they’re passing it to the next guy,” Strahm said. “That’s what they talk about when they smell blood in the water. They change their approach, and when hitters are doing that, it makes it a little harder to pitch against.”

Philadelphia wasn’t ready to crumble. The Phillies surged to the World Series in 2022 playing like the Mets. They made it to the NLCS last year until their inability to come back ended another run. This was the litmus test Philadelphia needed, though the bottom of the ninth didn’t start well. Tylor Megill, typically a starter, took care of Austin Hays and Kyle Schwarber in six pitches and had Turner in a full count before walking him. Harper, also having gone full, remained disciplined and drew a walk as well.

Castellanos found himself in a two-strike count, too, swinging over a slider and fouling off a sinker, both outside the zone. He tempered himself and didn’t bite on a slider in the dirt before Megill gave him a gift: a hanger, at his belt on the inner-half of the plate. He punished it into left, one-hopping it off the fence, and after celebrating with his teammates ran directly behind home plate to his 11-year-old son, Liam, screaming: “Let’s (bleeping) go.”

When asked how Liam responded, Castellanos said: “The same thing, but without the curse word.”

Liam is used to such celebrations by now. There was the bullet up the middle to walk off Atlanta in the 11th inning, and the shot down the right-field line to send San Diego home, and the pea to center field with the bases loaded that ended Pittsburgh’s night, and the laser into right field against Milwaukee. Sunday made four playoff teams Castellanos has walked off this year, the sort of thing that in other places would buy some grace.

Not Philly.

“They live and die by results, and I understand that completely,” Harper said. “So. that’s just how they are. When you sign here, when you play here, that’s how it is. And I respect them for it.”

When the smoke cleared — the fog machine in Philadelphia’s clubhouse after wins leaves an opaque haze over the room – what emerged were the Phillies as they want to be seen. They are not pushovers. They are not going to be bullied by a team that finished six games behind them in the standings. They do respect the Mets — and not in a begrudging way but real, tangible, earned respect. They also want to win a ring, and that, Castellanos said, is what makes days like Game 2 so enjoyable.

“Just the energy,” he said. “Coming together, writing the story, however it’s going to end.”

And how, he was asked, does he think it’s going to end?

“I have no idea,” Castellanos said, “but I’m excited to find out.”

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