Rhys Hoskins deserved a magical playoff moment. And he got it with one swing in Game 3.
Rhys #Rhys
They’d been through the worst of it. Through the rebuild, and the losing, and the failed prospects and the empty seats and the last four managers and the dead Octobers.
It was only fitting that homegrown cornerstones Aaron Nola and Rhys Hoskins turned out to be the Phillies that won the first playoff game in South Philadelphia in 11 years. They’d produced with inferior teammates, produced as the Eagles won it all and the Sixers surged past them, and they’d done it without a misstep. Friday night’s Game 3 win was theirs, and they’d earned every bit of it.
Hoss
Rhys Hoskins raised his hands, screamed at his dugout, and spiked his bat. He didn’t flip it. He spiked it. Then he trotted around the bases, having turned a 1-0 lead into a 4-0 lead against the Braves in Game 3 of the National League Division Series with a Big Hoss swing that directed a baseball at 107.3 mph some 394 feet away.
Redemption, for the moment, was his.
Aaron Nola strode off the mound in the first home playoff start of his career
Rhys Hoskins needed this. He hadn’t done much good in the playoffs; 1-for-19 with seven strikeouts, shaky at first base, as usual. Things were going poorly.
Rhys Hoskins deserved this. He’d been the voice of the Phillies for all six of his seasons, even after Bryce Harper arrived in 2019.
He’d already been booed three times Friday evening. He’d even get booed again.
Phillies fans in attending their first home playoff game in 11 years — when Hoskins was a freshman in college — booed him lightly when he was introduced before the game, residual ire from his Game 2 miscue, when he failed to field a hot grounder that led to the Braves’ win that evened the NLDS on Wednesday.
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He got booed again when, as the Phillies’ No. 2 hitter, he fanned on a 98.4 mph fastball from Spencer Strider, the favorite for National League Rookie of the Year. And again, in the third, when he fell on his butt trying to pick Alec Bohm’s errant throw from third. And yet again, in the sixth, when he dropped a double-play relay that would have ended the inning and preserved Aaron Nola’s shutout.
Now, in the third, he came to the plate insulted. The Braves had intentionally walked Kyle Schwarber, who’d led the league in homers but who, at the moment, was at least as cold as Hoskins. Bryson Stott had doubled at the end of a nine-pitch at-bat, leaving first base open, which meant the Braves were so certain of Hoskins’ failure that they were willing to risk another early run.
Rhys Hoskins needed this. Rhys Hoskins deserved this.
He got it, on a first-pitch, crippled fastball strider dealt at the knees, down the middle of the plate. The ball left Citizens Bank Park like a scalded cat.
Stott’s at-bat framed the moment, and Schwarber’s pedigree put another duck on the pond, and J.T. Realmuto chased Strider one batter later, and Harper launched lefty reliever Dylan Lee’s first pitch — a meatball fastball — into the Harper Zone in right-center. It was 6-0 when the 10th Phillies batter finally made the third out of the third inning.
But Big Hoss’s big swing turned the momentum in Game 3.
It’s what he needed. It’s what he deserved.
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