The drought is over: The Phillies clinch a playoff berth for the first time since 2011

HOUSTON — Amid the singing and the shouting, the champagne and the stogies, Rob Thomson stood at the center of the storm for a live television interview. As he talked, Kyle Schwarber sneaked up behind him, poured two beers over his head, and hollered, “You like it! You like it!”

Are you kidding? Thomson loved it.

The Phillies are back in the playoffs. Say it again. Let it sink in.

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It only took about 11 years — 4,010 days, to be precise, not that anyone was counting — but with Monday night’s 3-0 victory over the Houston Astros, the Phillies finally ended baseball’s longest active playoff drought.

They did with their longest-tenured player, Aaron Nola, on the mound for 6⅔ near-perfect innings. The second-longest, starter-turned-reliever Zach Eflin, came on for the ninth inning and got a shallow fly ball to center fielder Brandon Marsh for the clinching out. Schwarber hit his league-leading 45th and 46th homers, the first coming on the first pitch of the game.

And now, at last, the hunt for another red October is over.

“It’s step one,” Schwarber said during a break from the revelry. “We deserve it. Enjoy this night. Then, when it comes to that first pitch in the postseason, it’s time to strap it on.”

Game 1 of the best-of-three wild-card series will be Friday night, 11 years to the day after the Phillies’ last playoff game ended with Ryan Howard clutching his left Achilles and writhing in agony on the first base line. The Phillies will travel to either St. Louis or New York to face the NL Central champion Cardinals or the division rival Mets.

Mark your calendar.

» READ MORE: Projecting the Phillies’ playoff roster: Who’s in, who’s out in series vs. Mets or Cardinals

“It means everything,” said Bryce Harper, back in the playoffs in the fourth year of his 13-year, $330 million contract. “Being able to get here and get in this spot, this position to succeed in the postseason, that’s what you try to do, to be here with all your teammates, to be here for the organization, for the fan base, for the city of Philadelphia.”

Nobody in that clubhouse is better acquainted with Philadelphia than Nola and Eflin.

Nola got drafted by the Phillies in 2014. He made his major league debut a year later. He played with Howard and Utley and Hamels and Ruiz, then pitched for teams that lost 99, 91, and 96 games. He watched the teardown and the rebuild and signed a four-year contract extension just before the rebuild stalled.

Eflin came along in 2014, too, in a trade for none other than Jimmy Rollins. He has endured three knee surgeries. He thought his season was over in July but came back at the beginning of September. He’s among Thomson’s most trusted relievers.

The Phillies lined up Nola to start Monday night, in Game 160, because they want him to start Game 2 of the wild-card series five days later. They sent him to Houston on Sunday, before the final game of a rain-soaked series in Washington, to get extra rest.

And there he was, standing on a mound in October for the first time in his career, dogged by a reputation for wilting late in seasons, and not allowing a baserunner until there were two out in the seventh inning of a one-run game.

» READ MORE: How the Phillies’ latest playoff drought stacks up to others in MLB history

“Honest to God, I thought Nola was going to throw a perfect game,” Thomson said. “I really did. And when I went to take him out, I thought he was going to chew my head off. He just had that look in his eye. All night he had that look in his eye, like I’m going to get this thing done.”

Indeed, Nola was running on a higher octane. Through 31 starts and 198⅔ innings, his fastball averaged 92.7 mph. With the playoffs in his sights, 18 of his 88 pitches registered at least 94 mph. He scraped 95.4 in the sixth inning and got 15 swings-and-misses.

Nola retired the first 20 hitters before Astros slugger Yordan Alvarez lined a single to right field. OK, so Nola wouldn’t be perfect. But boy, did he deliver.

“It’s been a long time in the making,” Nola said. “Never been in this environment before right here. It’s good to do it with this group of guys. It’s good to do it with this team. It’s awesome, man.”

It wouldn’t be right to rhapsodize all of this for its improbability. After all, owner John Middleton authorized a franchise-record payroll that will come in over the luxury tax (raised to $230 million this year) for the first time ever. And the playoffs were expanded to include an extra wild-card team in each league. The 162-game road still isn’t easy, but it’s slightly more forgiving than before.

Yet there was something so, well, unexpected about the Phillies’ wild-card triumph. Four months ago, they were 22-29. That’s when they fired manager Joe Girardi and elevated Thomson. Since then, they are 65-44.

» READ MORE: Phillies players celebrate in clubhouse after ending playoff drought; highlights from clinching win

“Rob Thomson does a great job for us,” Harper said. “I think he’s a big reason why we’re here right now.”

There are others. The Phillies had no idea of the darkness ahead after they won a franchise-record 102 games in 2011. The second golden era in franchise history didn’t age well. The Phillies slid to 81, 73, and 73 wins in 2012, 2013, and 2014, then bottomed out at 63-99 in 2015.

One front office regime replaced another and undertook a down-to-the-studs rebuild that didn’t get off the ground as promisingly as the organization thought.

Four winters ago, the Phillies put a cart filled with money for free agents ahead of the twin horses of drafting and development. They signed Harper as part of the “Stupid Money” offseason of 2018-19 and figured the rebuild was over. They know now that they were still years away from seriously contending.

There was symbolism in Eflin closing things out. When the Phillies acquired him from the Los Angeles Dodgers in a 2014 trade for none other than Jimmy Rollins, it marked the first substantial move of the rebuilding project.

All these years later, there was Eflin, getting the out that ended the drought.

“This is exactly what you dream of,” Eflin said. “This is what you want. But we’re just getting started. We want to [celebrate] four more times. Everybody in this clubhouse wants to do that. It’s going to be special. We’re looking forward to it.”