The 10 most underrated moments of the Phillies playoff run

Table of Content

• Top 22 Single-Season Padres Home Run Leaders
• Ranger Suarez Two Pitches
• Fernando Tatís Jr.: 42 Home Runs in 2021
• Ken Caminiti: 40 Home Runs in 1996
• Bryson Stott’s Game-Tying Single in Game 4 of the NLCS
• Bryson Stott’s RBI Single off Spencer Strider
• Ranger Suarez Double Play Game 1 NLDS
• Bogaerts: Padres roster 'stacked, top to bottom'

As we’ll see below, Fernando Tatís Jr.‘s 42 home runs from 2021 marked the first time a Padres player surpassed 40 since 2009. While it didn’t happen in 2022 , it’s not outrageous to think he’ll be all over this leaderboard within the next few years. Be sure to also see where these sluggers land on the Padres’ all-time home run leaderboard, as well. It was a legendary performance, and it took all of about 2 minutes in real time.

Staked to a 2-0 lead thanks to four straight two-out hits in the 1st off Max Fried, Suarez ran into trouble right away in the bottom of the inning. With the bases loaded and one out, William Contreras had a chance to answer right back, but instead bounced a ball to short that the Phillies turned into a key double play, setting the tone for the entire series. The Phils would build a 7-3 lead before holding on for a 7-6, series-opening victory. Phil Nevin‘s power progression to this 41-homer barrage in 2001 was interesting to look at. His first full season’s worth of plate appearances came in 1999 when he stepped up to the plate 441 times.

Top 22 Single-Season Padres Home Run Leaders

His first full season came in 2006 when he slugged 24 home runs with 82 RBI. In the four seasons that followed, he never hit fewer than 30 dingers and finished with fewer than 100 RBI once. After David Robertson walked two batters in the top of the 9th following Harper’s legendary dinger, the Phils’ No. 3 starter was summoned from the ‘pen to record the final two outs for the pennant.

He owned a 1.020 OPS with 28 home runs and 60 RBI prior to the All-Star break but saw his OPS drop just over 100 points to .916 during the final stretch. While his 2022 season will be delayed because of a wrist injury, you just have to think Fernando Tatís Jr. is going to at least continue challenging Vaughn’s record in the near future.

Ranger Suarez Two Pitches

With Morton out, their pitching advantage against the Phillies’ Synderpen had been neutralized, and the Phils scored five runs off Atlanta’s bullpen in the series clinching 8-3 rout. Everyone remembers Hoskins’ bat spike home run, but it was the rookie shortstop who broke through against the previously unhittable Strider in Game 3 of the NLDS. We all remember Bryce Harper’s home run, but here are 10 high impact moments you may have forgotten. Harper laid the groundwork for that home run by laying off a 1-2 changeup from Suarez. As he told Ken Rosenthal moments after touching home plate, that had him looking for something hard, and he got it. He also turned it around at 108.9 mph off the bat and sent it 382 feet to the opposite field.

This was perhaps the best relief pitching performance of the playoffs, and it happened in Game 2 of the wild card round against St. Louis. But there were many other moments, smaller moments, from the postseason run that you may have forgotten. Here are 10 underrated or forgotten plays from that glorious blitz through October, in chronological order. Regardless of what becomes of the Phillies in the World Series, Harper has authored one of the most memorable moments in Phillies history and one of the biggest home runs in the annals of the MLB postseason. His most powerful two-month stretch in 2001 came in June and July when he slugged 18 homers with 51 RBI.

Fernando Tatís Jr.: 42 Home Runs in 2021

We, of course, remember the six-run 9th inning that kick-started the festivities in Game 1 of the wild card round, and we remember Bryce Harper’s incredible solo homer in Game 2. As the weeks have passed since the Phillies fell in six games to the Houston Astros in the World Series, I’ve found it’s gotten easier to look back on their 2022 postseason run. At first, the memories were bittersweet, knowing they came up just short of their ultimate goal in the Fall Classic, however, the passage of time, as it frequently does, has healed many of those wounds. Coincidentally enough, that non-100-RBI performance came when he hit a career-high number of homers, as he collected 99 RBI in 2009. After having a couple of cups of coffee with the Texas Rangers to begin his big-league career, Adrián González immediately became a power source for the Padres.

Outside of that, he hit eight homers in September and didn’t hit more than six in the three other months of the season. The 10 most underrated moments of the Phillies’ playoff run We all remember Bryce Harper’s home run, but here are 10 high impact moments you may have forgotten. But in today’s baseball, managers understand that the true “save” situation sometimes doesn’t happen in the 9th. That was the case here, and as Hader threw warmup pitches in the ‘pen he would never use, Harper circled the bases, three outs away from his first World Series.

Harper’s Game 6 homer, Hoskins’ bat spike, Jean Segura’s heroics, they’re all in there, and the story is worth a visit once a week just for the vibes. To use individual functions (e.g., mark statistics as favourites, set statistic alerts) please log in with your personal account. But in the bottom of the 2nd inning, Alec Bohm hit a line drive off the end of his bat that hit Morton on his pitching elbow, resulting in an infield hit.

González took advantage of certain opportunities to reach that magical number of 40. He slugged 28 of his dingers away from Petco Park, and 24 of them came prior to the All-Star break. But if we drill down a little more, April and May are what really set him off on this path of achievement, as he collected 20 homers and 40 RBI in that time. But after that point, which was Nevin’s age-30 campaign, he’d rack up just two 20-homer performances over his final five seasons.

Bryson Stott’s Game-Tying Single in Game 4 of the NLCS

In Game 2, Nola was just a bit better, going 6.2 innings and allowing just four hits with six strikeouts and one walk. Wheeler went 6.1 innings in Game 1 and gave up just two hits with four strikeouts and one walk. It was Jose Alvarado who gave up St. Louis’ two runs on that mammoth dinger to Juan Yepez, of all people. Just after their loss to the Astros, I ranked the 10 best moments of the Phils’ postseason in an effort to feel better, and they are generally the ones you play on a loop in your head when you’re feeling down.

When it comes to Padres home run leaders for a single season, there have been just a handful of 40-homer seasons since 1969. For the moment, they all fit neatly into the top-five of the franchise’s single-season leaderboard, and it had been a while since the last time it occurred…until it was done last year. During the regular season, Strider had pitched in four games against the Phils, three of them starts, and had gone 4-0 with a 1.27 ERA, allowing an opponents’ batting average of .097.

So here was Strider, in the 3rd inning, after shutting the Phils down in the first two frames with a blazing 98 mph fastball, seemingly invincible. However, a one-out Brandon Marsh walk and two-base throwing error on an errant pickoff by Strider brought Stott to the plate with a chance to get the Phils on the board. The lefty worked a 9-pitch at-bat before finally lining a ball down the right-field line to break through against Strider. They were pitching clinics against one of the best lineups in baseball during the regular season, and the Phils needed every one of those goose eggs.

Strider’s sudden hittability was likely more a result of his time on the injured list due to a strained oblique just before the playoffs, but Stott’s hit opened the floodgates that would soon follow. Remember, at this early stage of the postseason, no one really knew what Dominguez had left in the tank, but here he was, called upon to get the Phillies out of a huge jam in Game 2 against St. Louis. I included this in my original 10 best moments post, but I still don’t think it gets enough love.