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| Bryce Harper expects big changes in 2027. | CREDIT: Greg Saucinus |
Thursday night felt different.
The Atlanta Braves beat the Phillies, 6-2, in Game 3 of the National League Wild Card Series at Truist Park, ending a season that required 162 games just to reach October and sending the organization into an offseason with a question far bigger than who should have pitched when.
How much of this comes back?
Maybe Don Mattingly returns as manager. Maybe Dave Dombrowski reshapes the roster around Bryce Harper, Trea Turner and a pitching staff that still contains the bones of a contender. Maybe this core gets another opportunity to finish what it started with that unforgettable run to the World Series four years ago.
But after another October ended sooner than the one before it, simply bringing everyone back and hoping for a different result no longer feels inevitable.
The Phillies have reached the postseason five consecutive seasons. They reached the World Series in 2022. They lost the National League Championship Series in 2023. Then came consecutive Division Series exits in 2024 and 2025.
Now this.
A Wild Card exit.
Four consecutive postseason series losses.
And this one began going wrong almost immediately.
Aaron Nola walked Ronald Acuña Jr. and Matt Olson in the first inning before Michael Harris II reached down for a pitch barely more than a foot off the ground and drove it over the fence for a three-run homer. Nola lasted only 1⅔ innings, allowing three runs while throwing 38 pitches.
The Phillies had discussed starting Zack Wheeler instead.
They ultimately stayed with Nola, believing the veteran right-hander's regular rest and strong finish gave them their best path through the early innings.
“We talked about both scenarios,” Mattingly said. “The group kind of came to the fact that it felt like Noles was on solid rest. If he can get us into the game at all and have Zack after that — obviously that didn't go that well.”
Wheeler was always lurking.
He had started Sunday because the Phillies needed him in Game 162 just to ensure their postseason spot. That decision helped save the season, but it also meant Philadelphia entered October without the luxury of arranging its rotation the way a postseason team normally would.
By Game 3, the cost of that final-week scramble was impossible to ignore.
“You'd love to be able to set your pitching up and them be rested and all that kind of stuff,” Mattingly said. “But that's not the way it went. We had to fight to get ourselves in.”
Wheeler entered in the third.
Atlanta eventually got him, too.
Ozzie Albies hit a two-run homer in the fourth to make it 5-0. Matt Olson added another homer off Jonathan Bowlan in the seventh.
Three Atlanta home runs accounted for all six Braves runs.
The Phillies never produced anything resembling the furious comeback that saved their season one afternoon earlier.
Alec Bohm's groundout brought home their first run in the sixth. Derek Hill tripled to open the eighth and scored on Turner's sacrifice fly.
That was it.
Two runs.
Six hits.
No sustained rally. No October magic. No last-minute rescue.
Atlanta even called upon Game 1 starter Chris Sale for the final four outs. He struck out Harper to end the eighth and returned for the ninth to finish Philadelphia's season.
There was something fitting about it.
The Phillies spent the final weeks of the season fighting themselves almost as much as their opponents, watching an offense disappear at the worst possible time and exhausting valuable pitching resources simply to reach a postseason tournament they once expected to enter with much larger ambitions.
They escaped elimination Wednesday.
They could not do it again.
“We weren't able to get anything going,” Mattingly said, “and anytime we did, we weren't able to extend it.”
That sentence could describe more than Game 3.
The Phillies opened the season terribly, fired Rob Thomson and handed the club to Mattingly. They recovered. They climbed back into contention. They played winning baseball for much of Mattingly's tenure.
Then September arrived.
The margin disappeared.
By the final weekend, Philadelphia was no longer positioning itself for October. It was fighting merely to qualify for it.
That matters because postseason baseball magnifies everything.
Starting-pitching schedules matter more. Bullpen depth matters more. Platoon advantages become more important. Pitcher-hitter matchups become games within the game. Managerial leashes shrink. Every squandered scoring opportunity becomes heavier.
The Phillies arrived in Atlanta already compromised by what it had taken simply to get there.
Eventually, they ran out of answers.
Now come the harder questions.
Mattingly's future is unresolved.
Asked whether he wants to return, he declined to make the night about himself.
“I'm not concerned about myself in this situation,” he said. “I want the Phillies to do what they need to do to set themselves up for success.”
Later, Mattingly acknowledged that he wants to remain in baseball and spoke warmly about his brief tenure in Philadelphia.
“I loved being in Philly this year,” Mattingly said. “I actually like playing in that environment. I like the environment. It's a rough environment, but it's good.”
His players noticed.
“I have the utmost respect for Donnie,” catcher J.T. Realmuto said, “and we'd love to have him back.”
Whether Mattingly manages there again, though, represents only the first decision.
The larger evaluation belongs to Dombrowski and ownership.
What exactly is this team now?
It remains talented. Harper remains the centerpiece. Turner is entrenched. Wheeler, Cristopher Sánchez, Jesús Luzardo and Andrew Painter give the Phillies the makings of a formidable rotation.
There is too much talent here to call this a teardown.
But continuity and stagnation are separated by an increasingly thin line.
At some point, postseason experience has to become postseason advancement.
The Phillies once appeared to be moving closer.
Instead, the endings have come progressively earlier.
Mattingly declined to diagnose the core minutes after elimination.
“You look at your club, you evaluate it,” he said. “What went wrong, what went right, what's the positive, what's the negative, how do you move forward.”
Harper did not pretend everything will simply remain the same.
“I'd imagine this team is going to look a lot different next year,” he said.
That might be the most important sentence spoken Thursday night.
The 2022 Phillies announced themselves with a stunning October run. The 2023 team came within a victory of another pennant. The seasons that followed carried the assumption that another chance remained because the nucleus remained intact.
Thursday night did not definitively end that era.
Harper, Turner and Nola are all under contract for 2027. Much of the infrastructure of this team will remain.
But the idea that this particular group can simply return unchanged and take another swing at October?
That became considerably harder to defend when the final out settled into Chris Sale's glove.
For years, the Phillies entered the winter asking what they needed to add.
This winter presents a more uncomfortable question.
They have to determine what — and who — they are finally willing to change.
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