Thank you for not managing
By 
The biggest reason the Phillies won today is that their star player put a bow on a postseason for the ages:
As called on Fox Deportes: pic.twitter.com/oo1kA1owfY— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) October 23, 2022
The strange thing about this, however, is that Padres manager Bob Melvin allowed Harper to bat against a reliever who was in his second inning of work, with his expensively acquired closer available:
The Padres coveted Josh Hader for years. In August, they finally landed him. Today, with their season on the line and Bryce Harper at the plate, they did not put him in the precise kind of spot they acquired him to own. Hader never took the mound. Brutal ending for San Diego.— Dennis Lin (@dennistlin) October 23, 2022
MLB managers are, in general, becoming less of a slave to the “save” label, and are more willing to bring in their best relievers in the 8th inning to face the heart of the other team’s order (even Buck Showalter, who famously made the same fuckup with Baltimore, does this now.) Melvin decided to go with anachronistic conventional wisdom at the worst time.
And then there’s this:
The Padres just had Trent Grisham bunt (or allow him to bunt) with runners on 1st and 2nd and one out trailing by one in the ninth inning of a game that ended their season
That is among the worst on-field things I’ve ever seen in any sport
What in the world— Danny Abriano (@DannyAbriano) October 23, 2022
Win expectancy with 1 out and runners on 1st and 2nd: 27.6%
Win expectancy with 2 out and runners on 2nd and 3rd: 20.1%
So a WPA of -7.5% for the bunt. https://t.co/Ww8lVpp5uJ— Kyle Kishimoto (@kylemoto10) October 23, 2022
Regarding Grisham’s bunt, Melvin said it was supposed to be something of a hybrid between a bunt for a hit and a sacrifice. They’d noticed 1B playing back, and with the wet grass, felt they could capitalize.— AJ Cassavell (@AJCassavell) October 23, 2022
I have to say it sure looked like a straight sacrifice, but at any rate it’s not like he was bunting against the grain of an extreme shift or something; either way it’s a terrible percentage play.
If I were running the Padres I’d be looking for some new blood in the dugout right now.