PHILADELPHIA — Jean Segura muffed a soft relay toss on a play the Philadelphia Phillies second baseman said he has made “3,000 times” in his baseball career. He even got picked off at first — in the bottom half of the same inning as his fielding miscue.
He heard a few boos, but it’s Philly. Segura shook it off during Game 3 of the National League Championship Series on Friday night because he has played in scarier environments.
“It’s just the way we handle the pressure in Dominican Republic. Even when we play winter ball, we’ve got guys in the stands, ‘Hey, when you get out, we’re going to kill you,'” he said. “‘We’re going to do something bad to you.’ It’s just the way we play the game out there.”
Segura simply had to survive an error and a mental miscue in his home stadium, and he also thrived in the chaos with a Gold Glove-worthy dive to save one hit and added a clutch knock of his own to move the Phillies a win closer to the World Series.
Kyle Schwarber led off the bottom of the first inning with his latest scintillating home run, Segura atoned for a run-scoring error with a go-ahead single, and Philadelphia edged the San Diego Padres 4-2 for a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven matchup. Game 4 is Saturday, back at Citizens Bank Park.
The Phillies returned home to another packed house for the first NLCS game in the city since 2010 and are now two wins away from playing for their first MLB championship since 2008.
The Phillies can take solace in the fact they survived the Padres without playing their best baseball. Outside of Schwarber’s homer — affectionately known as a Schwarbomb in Philly — the big bats were pretty quiet. Segura and Rhys Hoskins also were charged with costly errors that made the game closer than it ever needed to be.
“I made a lot of mistakes, but it’s part of baseball,” said Segura, in his first postseason after 11 years in the majors. “You keep going forward. I came through.”
Phillies starter Ranger Suarez survived shoddy fielding to earn the win on the mound. He allowed only two hits and one earned run without a walk over 68 pitches in five sharp innings. Zach Eflin and Jose Alvarado tossed scoreless innings, and Seranthony Dominguez earned a six-out save as the Phillies head into a matchup expected to be largely a bullpen game.
After Josh Bell led off the ninth with a single, Jurickson Profar struck out on a full-count check swing that sent the outfielder into a rage. Profar, who had already slung his bat aside and headed toward first, cursed out third-base umpire Todd Tichenor for ringing him up.
Profar threw his helmet and kicked it as he stormed off the field, and he was ejected by plate umpire Ted Barrett.
“Originally it looked like it might have gone,” Padres manager Bob Melvin said. “Go back and look at it, maybe the bat didn’t get out there. It’s a close call, tough one. But maybe not.”
Melvin also said “it’s a big moment, obviously.”
In MLB best-of-seven postseason series that were tied 1-1, the Game 3 winner has gone on to win 67 of 97 times, or 69%.
Padres postseason ace Joe Musgrove couldn’t get out of the sixth inning and left the mound to Alec Bohm exhorting the crowd to get louder after his RBI double to right field past a diving Juan Soto made it 4-2.
“We take pride in being able to hit the best,” Bohm said. “We see one of those guys toeing the rubber against us, we’re going to bring it.”
The Phillies brought it against Musgrove from the first batter.
Schwarber worked a full count and then smashed his second solo homer of the series into the right-field seats. Schwarber, who led the National League with 46 homers this year, also hit a jaw-dropping, 488-foot solo drive in the opener in San Diego. Alas, this blast sailed only 405 feet.
The Phillies seemed poised to jump on Musgrove in the first inning after Hoskins and J.T Realmuto walked.
Musgrove acknowledged this week that he had been “beaten down by the crowds” early in his postseason career. Phillies fans — another sellout crowd of 45,279 went wild on every pitch — were frothing when Bryce Harper came to hit.
Harper, though, hit into a double play and Musgrove retired Nick Castellanos on a grounder to escape further damage. Musgrove threw 22 pitches without an out, then needed only two pitches to get three outs.
He worked out of another jam in the second when Bryson Stott, who hit a one-out double, was stranded on third.
The 29-year-old Musgrove has been the postseason ace for the Padres, the team he grew up rooting for as a California kid. He tossed one-hit ball over seven shutout innings in the clinching win over the New York Mets in the wild-card round and followed up with six solid innings to help beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in an NL Division Series.
“I don’t feel like I was at my best tonight,” he said. “Worst I felt in a little while.”
Suarez, meanwhile, had struggled of late and walked five batters in 3 1/3 innings while starting on the road in Game 2 of the NLDS against the Atlanta Braves. But it was Suarez who mowed down the Padres in rapid succession.
The left-hander threw only six pitches in the third inning. Suarez, who went 10-7 during the regular season, could have pitched deeper in the game, but manager Rob Thomson wants him fresh for another outing if the NLCS goes long.
Suarez should have escaped the fourth unscathed, but Segura took his eye off the ball at second base and dropped the toss for an error and a run scored in what should have been a 6-4-3 double play to end the inning. Suarez left two runners stranded to keep it 1-1.
Segura threw his bat and redeemed himself when he lofted a two-run single to right in the fourth for a 3-1 lead. He was promptly picked off at first. He later robbed Ha-Seong Kim of a base hit.
Hoskins muffed Trent Grisham’s routine grounder to lead off the fifth for a two-base error. Grisham scored an unearned run on Kim’s RBI groundout that made it 3-2.
Philadelphia’s bullpen took over from there and won a game in front of former World Series favorites of the past such as Charlie Manuel, Matt Stairs and Ryan Howard, who will throw the ceremonial first pitch before Game 4.
Maybe this year’s team could be next.