5 Things To Watch In Game 1 As Phillies Try To Make History Vs. Padres

PHILADELPHIA, PA — The Phillies magical and historic run through October continues Tuesday night when they take on the Padres in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series. They're four wins away from the World Series.

Never before has a team with a losing record that underwent a managerial change gone on to win a postseason series. New manager Rob Thomson has won two. Now he's trying for three.

SERIES PREVIEW: Red October Continues, Phillies Seek World Series Berth In NLCS Battle With Padres

Here's what to look for when the Phils take the field in San Diego at 8:07 p.m.

1. Scoring early and often

There are two key stats fans should know ahead of Tuesday night's game. The first is that the Phillies have scored nearly all of their runs in a handful of innings. It's a familiar postseason pattern by now: opposing pitchers have two or four or even eight shutout innings, and then the Phillies explode. It happened in the legendary Game 1 victory over the Cardinals, and it happened in all three wins of the series against the Braves.

The second stat: the Padres have an absolutely devastating back end of the bullpen. Between Josh Hader, Robert Suarez, and Luis Garcia, they have the ability to shorten games.

The Phillies have proven they can hit the Padres aces, including Yu Darvish, the Game 1 starter for San Diego. They scored 3 runs in 6 innings against him back during the regular season. Kyle Schwarber and Rhys Hoskins doubled.

Getting multiple runs off of Darvish in the first three or four innings would swing significant momentum their way. Darvish is among the best there is,

2. Zack Wheeler's pitch count

Wheeler hurled 7 innings of 4-hit, shutout ball against the Padres on May 18. He struck out 9 and threw 97 pitches.

He's coming off an extra day's rest, so expect him to throw at least 100 if not more, if he's throwing well. If that can get him through 7 innings, and the Phillies can rely on Seranthony Dominguez and Jose Alvarado to close things out, they're in good shape.

3. Phillies' right handed bats

Oddly, Darvish, a right-hander, has notably better numbers against left handed hitters than right handers. For 2022, right handers have a reasonable .645 OPS (on base plus slugging percentage) against him, while lefties are hitting a paltry .538.

That means that the Phillies big righties — Rhys Hoskins, J.T. Realmuto, Nick Castellanos, Alec Bohm, and Jean Segura — all have a big opportunity to set up. Hoskins and Realmuto particularly are coming off a huge series versus the Braves, and expect them to come out swinging big against Darvish.

4. Momentum and history

The Padres are, in many ways, the Phillies West Coast twin. Both emerged from the 2018 offseason with an enormous free agent signing (the Padres signed Manny Machado to a record contract weeks before the Phillies nabbed Harper). They overhauled their roster to build around a young core, though their farm system and their young players have received far more recognition in national media than the Phillies. They made a series of huge moves this offseason, like the Phillies, and stunned the baseball world by trading most of the upper echelon of their farm system for superstar Juan Soto in August.

They were Wild Card underdogs against the Mets and Dodgers the way the Phillies were against the Cardinals and Braves. They both have momentum, and enormous expectations from a starving fanbase. The Phillies had an 11-year postseason drought, but the Padres haven't been on the NLCS stage since 1998, when they eventually lost to the New York Yankees in the World Series. It's only their third trip this far into the postseason in franchise history. They've never won a World Series.

They'll play with an edge, like the Phillies do. If they score, expect the San Diego crowd to react like a Philadelphia crowd would. If they don't, expect them to react like a Philadelphia crowd would.

5. The Padres vaunted middle order

San Diego has a pair of the most talented hitters of this generation on its roster. There's Manny Machado, the perennial MVP candidate and Gold Glove third baseman who signed a mega-contract the same year as Bryce Harper. And then there's Juan Soto, the lefty slugger compared to Babe Ruth. Both are threats to change a game every time they come up to the plate.

And then there's guys like Jake Cronenworth, the under-the-radar star at second base who hits for average and some gap power, and suddenly-on-fire center fielder Trent Grisham, who Padres skipper Bob Melvin has hinted could be moved up to bat cleanup after ripping through the Dodgers in the NLDS.

Look for Wheeler to pitch them carefully. But after the way he handled the meat of the Cardinals (Albert Pujols, Nolan Arenado, and Paul Goldschmidt) and Braves (Ronald Acuna Jr., Austin Riley, and Matt Olson) lineups, bet on him to get several big time, full count, crowd-hushing strikeouts.