Los Angeles wins NLDS 3-1 with 2-1 walk-off victory in 11 innings. The Los Angeles Dodgers are headed back to the National League Championship Series — but it took a gut-wrenching mistake by the Philadelphia Phillies to get them there.
Phillies rookie reliever Orion Kerkering mishandled Andy Pages’ bases-loaded comebacker and then threw wildly past home plate with two outs in the bottom of the 11th inning, allowing pinch-runner Hyeseong Kim to score the winning run as the Dodgers beat Philadelphia 2-1 on Thursday night at Dodger Stadium to clinch their NL Division Series, three games to one.
As Kim crossed the plate, the 50,563 fans who had been standing for the final three innings erupted in a roar that shook Chavez Ravine. On the field, Kerkering dropped his head and put his hands on his knees as J.T. Realmuto’s glove flailed helplessly toward the errant throw skidding up the third-base line. Dodgers players streamed from the dugout to mob Pages near first base.
“I just tried to make the play,” a subdued Kerkering said afterward. “I rushed it.”
The sequence was as routine as it was tragic for Philadelphia. Pages, mired in a 1-for-23 postseason slump, broke his bat and rolled a two-hopper back to the mound. The ball glanced off Kerkering’s glove and trickled a few feet in front of him. Realmuto immediately pointed to first, but Kerkering, trying to recover in one motion, sidearmed a hurried throw home — one that sailed high and wide.
Phillies manager Rob Thomson put an arm around his distraught pitcher as he returned to the dugout moments later. “He’s been great for us all year,” Thomson said. “That’s a tough way for a season to end.”
According to the Elias Sports Bureau, this was only the second postseason series in history to end on a walk-off error. The first came in 2016, when Texas second baseman Rougned Odor made an errant throw that allowed Josh Donaldson to score the winning run in Toronto’s ALDS-clinching win over the Rangers.
For Los Angeles, it marked the third time the Dodgers have ended a postseason series with a walk-off win, joining Bill Russell’s single against the Phillies in the 1978 NLCS and Chris Taylor’s homer in the 2021 NL Wild Card Game.
Before the wild ending, Game 4 had been a tense pitchers’ duel. Phillies slugger Nick Castellanos gave Philadelphia a 1-0 lead in the seventh with an RBI double off Emmet Sheehan, but the Dodgers tied it in the bottom half when Jhoan Duran walked Mookie Betts with the bases loaded.
Dodgers rookie Roki Sasaki electrified the crowd with three hitless innings of relief, averaging 99.5 mph on his fastball and striking out four. He teamed with Tylor Glasnow, Sheehan, and winning pitcher Alex Vesia to hold the Phillies to just four hits. Glasnow, who started, was brilliant — allowing only two hits and three walks over six innings while striking out eight.
For the third straight year, the Phillies’ season ended in the Division Series — this time in particularly painful fashion. Wearing their powder-blue throwback uniforms for the second straight day, Philadelphia could only watch as Los Angeles celebrated its eighth trip to the NLCS in 13 seasons.
The defending World Series champions now await the winner of the Chicago Cubs–Milwaukee Brewers series, which resumes Friday.
“This team just finds ways to win,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “Sometimes it’s power, sometimes it’s pitching, and sometimes — like tonight — it’s just putting the ball in play and making something happen.”
For the Dodgers, the celebration was wild. For the Phillies, the silence afterward was deafening.
