Phillies' season complete with win over Twins. Next up: the NLDS.

Scott Lauber, The Philadelphia Inquirer on Sep 28, 2025

Published in Baseball

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PHILADELPHIA — In the time it usually takes him to complete two home-run trots, Kyle Schwarber put out the call.

“We’re going to ride with you guys,” he said, “all right?”

This was Sunday, a half-hour before Cristopher Sánchez’s first pitch of the Phillies’ regular-season finale — and three hours before Nick Castellanos’ sacrifice fly decided a 2-1, 10-inning victory over the Minnesota Twins. And because it will be six days before they play again — Saturday, in Game 1 of the National League division series — Schwarber grabbed a microphone for 60 seconds to thank the sold-out crowd for its support.

And to rally them for another Red October.

“We feed off all you guys here,” Schwarber said. “You know that. The Bank’s a hard place to play. So, when we come here, we start this thing off here, we need to hear all you guys buying into us.”

But before all that, some housekeeping.

— The Phillies finished with a 96-66 record, one win better than last season. They had 55 victories at home, second to the 1977 team and the most in 21 seasons at Citizens Bank Park.

— With the Mets’ season-finale loss on Sunday to the Marlins, the Reds clinched the final NL postseason berth. They will play the Dodgers in the wild-card round, and the Phillies will face the winner in the divisional round.

— Trea Turner returned to the lineup, as expected, three weeks after straining his right hamstring. He played five innings, went 0 for 2 and finished with a .304 average to win the NL batting crown. He’s the first Phillies batting champ in 67 years, since Richie Ashburn in 1968.

— Schwarber went 0 for 3 with a walk, leaving him with 56 home runs, two shy of equaling Ryan Howard’s single-season club record. But his 33 homers at home were the most in franchise history.

— Sánchez threw 21 consecutive strikes to begin the game. He blanked the Twins for 5 2/3 innings and walked off the mound to thunderous applause. He finished with a 2.50 ERA and 211 strikeouts in 201 1/3 innings and likely will be the Cy Young runner-up in the NL behind the Pirates’ Paul Skenes.

Next up, though, for Sánchez: Game 1 of the NLDS.

For three years, it has been the spot for Zack Wheeler. But the Phillies lost Wheeler for the season in mid-August to a blood clot near his shoulder that was caused by thoracic outlet syndrome. He had surgery earlier in the week, a month after getting the clot removed.

Yet in 39 games after losing their best pitcher, the Phillies got a 3.88 ERA from their starting rotation. Sánchez had a lot to do with that. He posted a 2.63 ERA in eight starts after Wheeler went down.

“He’s been great, you know?“ manager Rob Thomson said before the game. ”You lose a guy like Zack Wheeler, and I mean, everybody really stepped up. But he didn’t put too much pressure on himself and just went out there and did his thing. He was just being Sánchy and mowing people down, throwing up the strike zone. He was great. He really was.”

And from now on, each subsequent start will be the biggest of Sánchez’s career.

He will have a week to chew on that.

While the best-of-three wild-card round is waged at Dodger Stadium, the Phillies will work out in Citizens Bank Park. They will simulate a game Wednesday night, with fans in attendance. They will attempt to strike the tricky balance between getting rest after 162 games in 186 days and avoiding rust during five days without playing.

And they will decide on a division series roster.

Game 162 provided positive developments in that area, notably that Turner got two at-bats and ran well, though not at full speed, to first base on a pair of groundouts.

Max Kepler, who elbowed his way into a right-field platoon with Nick Castellanos over the last six weeks, returned to the lineup after missing three games due to illness and bashed a game-tying homer in his first game against the Twins, his former team.

And Orion Kerkering, who will be a crucial peg in the bridge to closer Jhoan Duran in the postseason, stranded the automatic runner in the 10th inning before Harrison Bader scored on Castellanos’ sacrifice fly.