Phillies 4, Braves 3: Bohm's 10th-inning homer forces a Game 3
Down 3-1 in the eighth, Philadelphia got back-to-back homers from Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper, then an extra-innings winner from Alec Bohm to stay alive in the NL Wild Card Series.
Facing elimination in Atlanta, the Phillies did what their lineup is built to do: change a game with three swings. Alec Bohm's two-out homer in the 10th inning off Didier Fuentes gave Philadelphia a 4-3 win in Game 2 of the NL Wild Card Series on Wednesday, squaring the best-of-three at a game apiece.
How it happened
The teams traded first-inning runs — Bryce Harper's infield single scored Trea Turner, Matt Olson's single answered with Ronald Acuña Jr. — before the starters took over. Atlanta's Tyler Mahle gave his team seven innings of one-run ball; Philadelphia's Cristopher Sánchez went 6⅔, charged with three, according to CBS Sports' recap.
The Braves broke through in the seventh, when Drake Baldwin's double — a ball Harper misplayed in right — scored Sean Murphy, and Olson's sacrifice fly made it 3-1. Then came the eighth: Kyle Schwarber and Harper hit back-to-back home runs off reliever Dylan Lee to tie it, Harper's blast answering his own mistake an inning earlier. "Obviously a ball I should have caught," Harper said, per CBS Sports. "How quickly can I turn the page and get past that moment, knowing I'm still coming up to hit."
What it meant
The win extended Philadelphia's season by exactly one day. On Thursday the 94-win Braves, NL East champions, took the decider 6-2 — getting to both Aaron Nola and Zack Wheeler, per CBS Philadelphia — to win the series and advance to an NLDS against the Dodgers.
So Game 2 stands as the high point of a short Philadelphia October: an 88-win wild-card team that pushed its division champion to a winner-take-all game on the road, and a reminder of how quickly Schwarber, Harper and Bohm can flip a deficit — and how thin the margin is when they don't.