Phillies avoid vaunted Dodgers, will face Padres in NLCS after wild rally

Don’t get it twisted. The Padres are a good baseball team. Very good.

But they aren’t the Dodgers.

Not even close.

Barely a week after clinching a playoff berth on the third-to-last day of the season, the Phillies are suddenly even money to reach their first World Series since 2008 after the Padres eliminated the vaunted Dodgers with a five-run rally in the seventh inning to set up a championship series showdown between the National League’s two lowest-seeded wild cards.

The Dodgers had entered the postseason as presumptive World Series favorites after winning a franchise-record 111 games in the regular season. With the National League’s second-largest payroll and a roster that includes four former league Most Valuable Player Awards, they and the Mets were the two biggest reasons to doubt whether the Phillies were true World Series contenders.

Now, the league’s top four seeds will be sitting at home as the Phillies and Padres square off in a best-of-seven series with the winner advancing to the World Series.

San Diego was one of the biggest stories in baseball over the second half of the season after an aggressive trade deadline performance in which they added the brightest young star in the sport in slugger Juan Soto plus a trio of other upgrades.

» READ MORE: The Phillies didn’t just clinch an NLCS berth. They recaptured a city.

Here’s an early look at some of the matchups and plot lines as the Phillies prepare to travel to San Diego for Tuesday’s NLCS opener, time TBD.

After a grueling few weeks that included a 10-game road trip to end the regular season followed by four straight road playoff games, the Phillies will enter this seven-game series with the top of their rotation on full rest and at full strength.

Aces Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola are both expected to be good to go in Games 1 and 2. Wheeler will be operating with an extra day of rest in Game 1 on Tuesday after the Phillies were able to avoid using him in their closeout win over the Braves in Game 4 of the NLDS on Saturday. Nola will take his normal turn in Game 2 after pitching the Phillies to a win on Friday in Game 3 of the NLDS.

The Padres have a number of different options that they can choose from, but the smart money is on veteran righty Yu Darvish getting the start in Game 1. Darvish, a five-time All-Star who finished second in NL Cy Young voting with the Cubs in 2020, has won both of this starts this postseason while allowing four runs on 13 hits and two walks with 11 strikeouts in 12 innings. He pitched the Padres to a 7-1 win over the Mets in Game 1 of the Wild Card round and a 5-3 win over the Dodgers in Game 2 of the NLDS.

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Darvish faced the Phillies twice in the regular season with good results. In a 2-0 Padres win on May 19, he held them scoreless for seven innings with five strikeouts. A month later, he held them to three runs in six innings with nine strikeouts and a walk in an 8-5 Padres loss.

San Diego will have the option of using either Mike Clevinger or Blake Snell in Game 2. Clevinger would make a lot of sense for two big reasons. One, he is a fly-ball pitcher who has been much better in the spacious confines of Petco Park this season: a 2.88 ERA at home vs. a 5.46 ERA on the road. Two, he held the Phillies to one hit in five scoreless innings with five strikeouts and no walks in a 3-0 win in the regular season.

The projected matchups:

Game 1 (Tuesday, Oct. 18 in San Diego): RHP Zack Wheeler vs. RHP Yu Darvish

Game 2 (Wednesday, Oct. 19 in San Diego): RHP Aaron Nola vs. RHP Mike Clevinger

Game 3 (Friday, Oct. 21 in Philadelphia): LHP Ranger Suarez vs. RHP Joe Musgrove

Game 4 (Saturday, Oct. 22 in Philadelphia): RHP Noah Syndergaard vs. RHP Blake Snell

x-Game 5 (Sunday, Oct. 23 in Philadelphia): Wheeler vs. Darvish

x-Game 6 (Monday, Oct. 24 in San Diego): Nola vs. Clevinger

x-Game 7 (Tuesday, Oct. 25 in San Diego): Suarez vs. Musgrove.

x-if necessary