Everyone's stepping up — Phillies 2 wins from World Series after demolishing D-backs

This time, it took two batters.

It was 8:19 p.m. Tuesday — exactly 24 hours after Kyle Schwarber hit Zac Gallen's first pitch of Game 1 into the right-field seats to give the Phillies a lead they never relinquished — when Trea Turner hit Merrill Kelly's fifth pitch of Game 2 out to left.

Just like that, another early Phillies lead. Another night of playing from ahead from start to finish.

The Phils went on to demolish the Diamondbacks, 10-0, and head to Arizona with a commanding 2-0 lead in the NLCS.

The D-backs hadn't lost this postseason before arriving in Philly. Now, they're basically in must-win mode.

The last team to score double-digit runs and shut their opponent out in the playoffs was the 2014 Royals in Game 6 of the World Series. No National League team had done it since the Phillies in Game 3 of the 2009 NLCS against the Dodgers.

The Phils are 72 innings into their postseason and have trailed at the end of two of them — the eighth and ninth innings of Game 2 of the NLDS in Atlanta. Every other inning of the playoffs has ended with the Phils either leading or tied.

Seven long months ago, Turner set the World Baseball Classic on fire, hitting .391 with five home runs in 25 plate appearances before ever suiting up for the Phillies in a game that counted.

Kelly, a big part of the team who started for USA in the WBC Final, had an up-close look at just how much Turner can affect a game.

"I definitely don't want to hang Trea a two-strike changeup, that's for sure," Kelly said Monday, the afternoon before taking the mound for the Diamondbacks in Game 2 at Citizens Bank Park.

It wasn't a hanging two-strike changeup. Instead, it was a 94 mph fastball left up and over the middle of the plate that Turner hit 421 feet for his third home run of the postseason.

Schwarber went yard in the third inning, then again in the sixth. He has 50 home runs in 2023, including the playoffs, and 102 in two years with the Phillies.

The longball has been a huge part of the Phils' playoff run. They've out-homered their opponents, 19-4, and though the last 13 have all been solo shots, they've come at crucial times, serving as nightly tone-setters.

The Phillies broke the game open in the bottom of the sixth with back-to-back two-out doubles by J.T. Realmuto and Brandon Marsh that plated three runs. It was vital insurance a night after the D-backs put the tying run on base in each of the final three innings. They tacked on two more in the seventh on an Alec Bohm double.

Aaron Nola made his eighth playoff start. The Phillies have won six of them. Five have been at home and Nola has a 1.57 ERA. The Diamondbacks barely touched him.

Nola immediately found himself in a difficult spot Tuesday night. Leadoff man Corbin Carroll grounded a ball to shortstop and Turner rushed the play because of Carroll's speed, bobbling it for an error to begin the top of the first.

But Nola kept Carroll, who stole 54 bases during the regular season, planted firmly at first base with a series of slide steps to the next three batters. Two strikeouts and an infield fly later, the inning was over.

Nola had not used a slide step for at least five years. He reincorporated it around the All-Star break and ramped up its usage in September. It has helped him substantially in the running game. Nola, with long arms, long legs and a long delivery, has had problems holding runners on throughout his career. He was previously uninterested in turning back to a slide step because he felt that it negatively affected his stuff and mechanics. That hasn't been the case the last two months. In fact, beyond helping control runners, the slide step has also disrupted the timing of the hitter at the plate.

Nola has allowed just one stolen base on two attempts over his last four starts, to MLB leader Ronald Acuña Jr. The D-backs are a team that loves to run and the Phillies knew it would be an important part of this series. So far, Arizona hasn't swiped a bag in the series.

Carroll and Acuña, the leadoff men the Phillies have faced in the NLDS and NLCS, are both MVP candidates. The Phils have held them to 3-for-21 with one extra-base hit.

Bohm was important defensively for a second straight night. He ended Game 1 by starting a 5-4-3 double play on a hard-hit ball to his right. It was not an easy play. He back-handed it with his body and weight shifted away from second base but fired an immediate neck-high throw to Bryson Stott.

In Game 2, he robbed Gabriel Moreno of a leadoff double in the second inning by diving to his right and throwing a strike to Bryce Harper at first base. In the fourth inning, Tommy Pham hit a ball sharply to Bohm's left. Again, he dove, fielded it and threw to second for the force-out. If he didn't make the play on Pham, the D-backs would have had two runners on with nobody out and the go-ahead run at the plate.

"He's improved so much," manager Rob Thomson said earlier in the day. "I mean, it's a drastic change from when he first got to the big leagues. Does he have the greatest range in the world? No, but now, I know that if he gets to the ball, there's a really good chance he's going to field it and throw it accurately."

Two nights in a row, the Phillies have looked like the more prepared, more confident and flat-out more talented team than the Diamondbacks. In Game 1, Zack Wheeler, Schwarber, Harper and Nick Castellanos led the charge.

In Game 2, it was everyone.

The Phillies are 7-1 this postseason. Two more wins will send them back to the World Series, either in Arlington where their season began, or against hated Houston, the team that crushed their dreams a year ago.