Jean Segura had never played in the postseason, but his two-run single put Philadelphia on top to stay in a wild ninth inning that completed an unusual comeback.
ST. LOUIS — Jean Segura has played a decade in the major leagues. He is about halfway to 3,000 hits and has earned almost $80 million. He has toiled for five teams in four divisions, and twice played in the All-Star Game.
In all that time — 1,328 games — Segura had never reached the postseason. No active player in the majors had played as many games as Segura without doing so. The distinction has shadowed him.
“I really want to be there,” Segura said in August, by his locker in Philadelphia. “For me, it’s just about winning games, because I’ve got the money, I’ve got the time in the game, I’ve had success in my career. I just want to go there, I want to see how it feels with the stadium packed, 43,000 people in the stadium. In ’17, I got a little bit of experience in the W.B.C., and it was really fun.”
The World Baseball Classic in March is one thing. The opening game of the playoffs at Busch Stadium is another. Segura made that delicious discovery on Friday, when his two-run, ninth-inning single put the Phillies ahead in a 6-3 comeback victory over the St. Louis Cardinals. The best-of-three series continues on Saturday.
The Phillies became the first team ever to enter the ninth inning of a postseason game with no runs and then erupt for so many. They are built on power, but patched together the winning rally with, in order: a single, two walks, a hit batter, a single, a fielder’s choice, a single and a sacrifice fly.
“That was the most exciting inning I’ve ever been a part of, and it didn’t even take a big home run,” said catcher J.T. Realmuto, whose one-out hit to left started the stampede. “The moment was there for us, and multiple guys stepped up when they needed to and took advantage of it.”
Realmuto was also making his playoff debut, after nine seasons and 1,005 games. He arrived in a trade from Miami in 2019, when Bryce Harper signed a 13-year, $330 million contract that offered the promise of better times ahead.
Yet the Phillies still struggled to make the leap to contender; for three seasons, they were essentially a .500 team, changing managers twice and landing this June on Rob Thomson, the bench coach, on an interim basis. The Phillies responded to Thomson — a baseball lifer and strong communicator — and went 65-46 for him to earn their first playoff berth since 2011.
For eight innings, they got the same result as their last playoff game: no runs against the Cardinals. Back then, St. Louis took a 1-0 victory to clinch a division series and close the Phillies’ five-year postseason run. The Cardinals went on to win the World Series and have stayed very good ever since; this is their eighth trip to the playoffs since that title.
This year’s appearance was in doubt at midseason. The Cardinals reached the All-Star break in second place in the N.L. Central, a half-game behind Milwaukee, but finished seven games ahead. Albert Pujols’s time-traveling act in the second half (18 home runs and a .323 average) helped a lot, and so did shrewd deals for starters José Quintana and Jordan Montgomery, who combined for 24 starts and a 2.56 earned run average.
“Was it the shiniest objects and what everybody was talking about? Absolutely not,” Manager Oliver Marmol said. “We won at the trade deadline. That’s the big reason why we’re here today.”
Marmol picked Quintana as his starter for Friday, opting for his hottest pitcher (0.81 E.R.A. since Sept. 1) and best left-hander. Quintana shut out the Phillies into the sixth, and Zack Wheeler blanked the Cardinals into the seventh.
With two outs in that inning, the pinch-hitter Juan Yepez pulled a two-run homer just inside the left field foul pole off José Alvarado. But Ryan Helsley, the Cardinals’ closer, came undone in the ninth.
Helsley, a right-hander, had jammed the middle finger of his pitching hand on Tuesday — he lost his balance after catching a line drive — but looked sturdy for two outs in the eighth. But he lost the feel for his pitches in the ninth, walking two batters and hitting Alec Bohm to force in a run.
Had there been two outs, Marmol said, he would have called for a strikeout pitcher, Jack Flaherty, to finish the game. With one out, though, he summoned a ground-ball specialist, Andre Pallante, to try to get Segura to ground into a double play.
The infielders played halfway, ready to turn a double play on a hard-hit ball or fire home on something softer. The gamble was that Segura, a strong contact hitter, might poke a grounder to the right side, just hard enough to get through but just weak enough to give two runners time to score.
That is what happened, and the Phillies had seen it before.
“Classic Jean,” outfielder Nick Castellanos said. “He’s got tremendous hand-eye coordination, and he can put anything in play.”
At Wrigley Field in late September, Segura had been picked off when he wandered off first after losing track of the count; the Phillies were swept by the also-ran Chicago Cubs and seemed to be bungling their playoff chance.
They recovered to win four of their next five and clinch a wild card, and Segura rose on Friday with a clear mind. His opportunity was finally here.
“I was ready today,” he said. “I woke up at 7 a.m. with adrenaline in my body knowing that I am going to play a postseason game today. I was mentally focused on every play, every pitch. I came prepared today to play a game.”
In the first eight innings, Segura turned a double play on Pujols but was quiet at the plate, with two ground outs and a fly out. Then came the ninth, when a humble ground ball became the biggest hit of Segura’s life. He jumped for joy as he charged to first base.
“It’s like when you give a little kid a toy,” Segura said. “Just jumping all around. Happiness.”
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