The excitement around Philadelphia sports continues to grow as the Phillies take hold of Game 1 of the National League Championship Series. NBC10’s Aaron Baskerville has more from South Philadelphia.
Wheeler, Schwarber and Harper star in Phillies' Game 1 win over Padres originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia
SAN DIEGO -- Three of the Phillies' biggest stars shined brightly Tuesday night as the red-hot team opened the National League Championship Series with a 2-0 win over the San Diego Padres at Petco Park.
Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber accounted for the Phillies' runs with a pair of homers against Yu Darvish, and Zack Wheeler was brilliant on the mound, holding the Padres to just a single and a walk over seven shutout innings.
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Seranthony Dominguez and Jose Alvarado finished off the one-hitter in the eighth and ninth.
The Phillies are 6-1 in this postseason, not bad for a club that had gone 10 seasons without a postseason berth before squeaking into this one with 87 wins as the sixth and final seed in the NL.
Game 2 of the best-of-seven series will be played Wednesday afternoon. Aaron Nola, who has allowed just one unearned run over 12⅔ innings in a pair of wins this postseason, will start for the Phillies against lefty Blake Snell.
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The Phillies are 41-19 in Petco Park since it opened in 2014.
The Phillies did little against Darvish in the early innings. The right-hander gave up just one hit and struck out five over the first three innings. He struck out the first batter in the fourth, J.T. Realmuto, before Harper launched a 1-0 fastball to left for his fourth homer of the postseason and a 1-0 lead.
Darvish set down the next five batters before Schwarber led off the sixth with a cannon shot homer into the second deck above right field. The ball came off Schwarber's bat at an incredible 119.7 mph and traveled 488 feet.
Schwarber went 1 for 20 in the first two rounds of the playoffs, but he's getting hot. He had a hit and three walks in Games 3 and 4 of the NL Division Series against Atlanta -- both were Phillies wins -- and he was all over the bases in this one. He walked in the first inning, singled in the third and homered in the sixth.
Darvish gave up only three hits in seven innings of work, two of them just so happened to put runs on the board for the Phillies. He walked one and struck out seven.
Harper and Schwarber have played in the postseason before. This is Wheeler's first trip to the October tournament and he's making the most of it.
He pitched 6⅓ shutout innings in a 6-3 win over St. Louis in Game 1 of the NL wild-card series. He followed that with six innings of three-run ball against Atlanta in Game 2 of the NLDS. Wheeler would have pitched six shutout innings in that game had Rhys Hoskins made a play on a routine ground ball that would have ended the sixth inning. Chaos ensued after Hoskins' misplay and Wheeler was charged with three earned runs after the misplay was ruled a hit.
Wheeler's brilliance extends back into September when he gave up just one run in 15 innings over his last three starts.
Before Tuesday night, he faced San Diego one other time this season. He pitched seven shutout innings, struck out nine and walked none in that one, a 3-0 win in Philadelphia.
Wheeler appeared to have plenty left in the gas tank but he exited at just 83 pitches as manager Rob Thomson went to Dominguez and Alvarado for the eighth and ninth. They put the finishing touches on the win, but things got interesting in the ninth.
Alvarado walked Jurickson Profar with one out before Alec Bohm made an error on a potential game-ending double-play ball. Alvarado stayed cool and retired Manny Machado and Josh Bell with two men on base to end it.
