Trea Turner didn’t just break a tie Wednesday night. He cracked a silence.
With one out in the ninth and the score knotted at three, Turner uncorked his first homer of the season—a 402-foot missile off Raisel Iglesias’ hanging slider, dead center of the plate, the kind of pitch you don't so much swing at as obliterate. The ball landed in the left-field seats. The Phillies had a 4-3 lead. And the Braves, just like that, had no more room for error.
Iglesias (0-2) had allowed just one home run in his last 25 appearances. Make it two.
The blast was the capstone to a back-and-forth night at Truist Park, a game that never quite settled into a rhythm and never quite tipped its hand—until Turner did the tipping.
Two innings earlier, Bryce Harper reminded everyone why he's the thunder in the middle of the Phillies' order. With Turner aboard, Harper jumped on a Dylan Lee fastball and launched it into the Braves' bullpen in center, a two-run shot that briefly gave the Phils a 3-2 lead.
That lead didn’t last long. Austin Riley—who’d already stranded the bases loaded twice—made up for it with a solo homer off Joe Ross in the bottom of the seventh, his second of the season, to even the score once again.
From there, the game pivoted on the slimmest of margins.
In the ninth, Braves fans were on their feet after Marcell Ozuna singled and Riley shot another base hit up the middle to move the potential tying run 90 feet away. But José Alvarado, who had already recorded the final out of the eighth, painted 98s and dotted the zone with cutters, blowing away Sean Murphy to end it.
Alvarado (2-0) earned the win with a four-out, two-strikeout performance, slamming the door on a night where every inch mattered.
And speaking of close calls: Phillies starter Taijuan Walker seemingly escaped before everything unraveled. He threw 94 pitches over 4.2 scoreless innings, stranding five runners, inducing a huge double play, and surviving some hard contact. When he finally ran into real trouble in the fifth, José Ruiz stepped in with the bases loaded and two outs.
One pitch. One popup. One massive sigh of relief as Bryson Stott camped under it in shallow right.
So now, the series is tied, 1-1. One more to go. But if Wednesday night was any indication, these teams are on a collision course all season long. And the margins? As slim as a misplaced slider in the ninth.
Quotable
“My swing’s been feeling really good, and my work has been really good. I feel like I'm getting myself in good counts, but just really not getting a lot of pitches to hit. Yesterday, I got some pitches to hit for the first time in a while, and just kind of fouled them off -- took great swings, just fouled them off. I felt like if I keep swinging at those, and getting myself in those good counts, then it’ll come.” - Trea Turner following Wednesday's win, per MLB.com. Phillies WPA (win probability added)
No surprise that Turner's WPA (0.38) led the club. Harper (0.31) and Alvarado (0.25) followed. On the other side, Brandon Marsh finished 0-for-4 on the night and ended with a -0.21.
Up Next
Jesus Luzardo will face Spencer Schwellenbach in the finale on Thursday night. Luzardo has been outstanding thus far, posting a 1.50 ERA over his first two starts with the Phillies.
