What if the Phillies won Game 5 of the 2011 NLDS against St. Louis?

Every Wednesday, The Athletic’s MLB writers will be looking at a key what-if scenario from a different team’s history. This week: The Philadelphia Phillies.

The sight is still unforgettable.

Phillies slugger Ryan Howard staggered to the ground barely halfway up the first-base line, grabbing at the back of his left heel as the Cardinals recorded the final out to set off a celebration. The winningest Phillies team in franchise history, backed by the vaunted “Four Aces” rotation, had their 2011 World Series aspirations snuffed out in a 1-0 loss in Game 5 of the National League Division Series. The Cardinals went on to win the title in a memorable Fall Classic while the Phillies organization was never the same.

Although few realized it at the time, that Game 5 loss on Oct. 7, 2011, ended a dominant Phillies era in which they won five consecutive division titles, appeared in two World Series and captured their first championship in 28 years. That night in Philadelphia sent them on a path to rebuilding the organization in an effort to return to sustained success. And yet the Phillies still haven’t recorded a winning season since 2011, now owners of the second-longest playoff drought in Major League Baseball.

So, on the nine-year anniversary of their last postseason game, it’s worth wondering: What if the Phillies had won Game 5 of the 2011 NLDS? Eleven people connected to Game 5 from the Phillies and Cardinals spoke to The Athletic to weigh this difficult question and revisit the fascinating subplots of the game and series. Some answers have been edited for length and clarity.

The lead-up to the 2011 postseason

The Phillies were cruising as they entered September 2011. They had the best record in baseball, already 40 games over .500, and built a 7 1/2-game lead in the NL East. Meanwhile, the Cardinals entered the final month having won five of their last six games, but faced a significant hurdle to reaching the postseason; St. Louis sat 8 1/2 games behind both Milwaukee, for the NL Central lead, and Atlanta, for the lone NL wild card spot. The Cardinals arrived in Philadelphia on Sept. 16 for a four-game series. The Phillies clinched the division with a win the next day, though the Cardinals would take three of four games. That series sent the teams in different directions. It was the start of eight consecutive losses for the Phillies while the Cardinals won 7 of 10 games entering the final weekend. They required help to get into the postseason, though. The Cardinals needed the Phillies to beat Atlanta on the last day of the regular season. A Cardinals win and Braves loss would have forced a Game 163 between the two teams to determine the wild card winner and the Phillies’ future NLDS opponent.

Tony La Russa, Cardinals manager: Whenever there was a question about urgency, we got together and said, “Look, we’re going to play this next game like it’s the last game of our life or Game 7 of the World Series.” It was one of our things that we did. So we’re going to play the final 32 games like that. For the last two weeks of the season, we’re thinking, “Man, we’ve got a shot.”

Charlie Manuel, Phillies manager:  I’m never going to manage a game and try to lose. But at the same time, I was getting ready for the playoffs, and if you go look I made a couple changes to my lineup during the game and it wasn’t like we had our best team on the field by no means. I remember Michael Martinez made a good play in the outfield that game at a big moment.

Rich Dubee, Phillies pitching coach: Shoot, I was looking at that scoreboard and thinking, OK, if we don’t win here for our 102nd win of the year, which set the franchise record, if we don’t win, they have to play a playoff. They’ll be tired and beaten up when they have to come face us, which I’d love to see.

Manuel: I left (Hunter) Pence in the game and I don’t know why. He got the big infield hit and won the game. I’m never going to manage a game and try to lose.

Dubee: I was hoping — and I never want to lose a game in my life — but I was hoping we would lose to Atlanta because they’d have to have a playoff game with the Cardinals.

Manuel: The Braves had every chance to win that game and for some reason they didn’t. That right there is how it goes sometimes. If we’d beaten St. Louis in one of those games when they beat us three out of four, they might not have gotten in, either.

La Russa: We watched the last four or five innings of the Phillies-Braves game. We were convinced we were going to have a one-game playoff with Atlanta. At the moment it ended, we were celebrating and respecting the Philadelphia Phillies because of their professionalism. They played until the last game. A lot of teams will start thinking ahead, it’s just human nature. When we went in to play them in the NLDS, we could not have had more respect for a team.

John Mozeliak, Cardinals general manager: I’ve never studied this, but I feel like teams that have to have important Septembers tend to perform better in October. In other words, they don’t have to hit the “on” button. They’ve already been doing it.

The decisive Game 5

The teams traded wins through the first four games of the five-game series. The Phillies won behind Roy Halladay in Game 1 but wasted an early 4-0 lead with Cliff Lee on the mound in a Game 2 loss. Ben Francisco’s three-run homer in the seventh inning provided all the offense the Phillies needed in Game 3 to hold off St. Louis. They couldn’t close it out in Game 4, however, sending the series back to Philadelphia for the elimination game.

It was a storybook pitching matchup between close friends, Roy Halladay and Chris Carpenter, who was pitching on three days rest. The Phillies had reason to be confident entering the game. They were riding their ace, Halladay, who finished second in Cy Young Award voting that year, and the offense had already shown it could hit Carpenter after tagging him for four runs in three innings in Game 2. Behind the scenes, the underdog Cardinals were dealing with a closely kept secret: La Russa was going to step down after the season ended. Only Mozeliak and St. Louis managing partner Bill DeWitt were aware of the decision. Before Game 5, Mozeliak met with La Russa to determine the plan if the Cardinals lost, settling on La Russa flying back to St. Louis separately and meeting with the team the following afternoon to break the news. That scenario didn’t play out. Fourteen pitches in, the Cardinals scored the lone run of the game. A Rafael Furcal triple and Skip Schumaker double would be enough off Halladay, who went eight innings. Carpenter countered with a complete-game shutout to give the Cardinals a 1-0 win and end the 102-win Phillies’ season.

Ruben Amaro Jr., Phillies general manager: Every little thing matters, especially with “Doc” on the mound. We put ourselves in this position, unfortunately, because we didn’t win games that we should have won during the five-game series.

Cole Hamels, Phillies starting pitcher: It was the first time I was ever in the bullpen. But I knew I wasn’t going to be going in. It was funny when (Halladay) warmed up and he’s walking out and then you’ve got Cliff (Lee) and myself walking out to the bullpen, just in case to come in for some reason.

Jimmy Rollins, Phillies shortstop: It was one of those series going into it with the Cardinals, we were so evenly matched, whether they had more talent and we have more heart, or vice versa. There was just something, like no matter who was on the mound for them, who was on the mound for us, you knew it was coming down to the final three outs of the game, period. It was always that way.

Hamels: You could tell (Halladay) had that weird, stoic, eff you sort of confidence. And I’m like, oh my God, I don’t want him to see me walking to the bullpen. (Laughs.) Because it was doubt. You don’t want to put doubt into this guy’s head. Like, no, maybe I should have just stayed in the dugout. And I know Cliff was thinking the same thing, “This is so weird.”

Ryan Howard, Phillies first baseman: Rafael Furcal, man. He came out and ambushed. What I tell people all the time is, whenever Cliff or Roy really got in trouble was when teams jumped on them early in the count. They ambushed him.

Dubee: I thought Carpenter was good, but I didn’t think he was fantastic. I thought we just missed some balls. We had some pretty good swings on him at times. But we just couldn’t put together any rallies. Doc did his thing, giving up one in the first and it was a classic heavyweight battle.

Pete Mackanin, Phillies bench coach: If we could have just squeaked out something because Roy pitched his ass off.

Howard: Over the course of the game, no one would have ever thought it would be a 1-0 game. No one. No one would have ever said, “What if I told you you’re going to lose this game 1-0?” No shot.

Mozeliak: I had two major things on my mind at that point, Tony stepping down and Albert (Pujols’) pending free agency. … Usually one run does not hold up. I mean, I wasn’t even focused on the score. I just remember as we were approaching the seventh, eighth and ninth that I started just counting outs.

Amaro: I was very confident going into that game that Doc was going to be Doc, which he was. Doc was so accountable, and the fact that he did not win that game, I think that crushed him. I really think that hurt him because for so long he had longed to pitch in the playoffs. He had been pitching great, and he did pitch great. He took a lot of responsibility like that one run. I’m sure he thought about it a lot: “I should never have given up that run. That shouldn’t have happened to me.” But it’s part of the game and I could never fault him for anything, because he was so accountable and he worked so hard to be successful.

Raul Ibañez, Phillies outfielder: One ball I hit to right field off of Carpenter (in the fourth) I just missed. It’s a game of centimeters in the batter’s box, but I’ve often wondered about that play. I felt like that would have been the year — our team, our year. Having Doc and Cliff and Cole and Roy (Oswalt), having that type of staff and the offense that we had, we had all the pieces in place. And it just came down to that moment.

La Russa: You know what was the best and the most painful lesson that I learned in my career? The postseason is a real crapshoot. The reality is what makes the postseason so exciting is that in a short series, a hot pitcher, hot player, can be the difference. And that’s why it’s no disgrace to the Phillies that they got beat that year. It happens in the postseason all the time.

Brad Lidge, Phillies closer: Obviously, with that staff and that rotation, only the greatest game ever by Carpenter was going to be able to beat Doc Halladay. So if you survive that and you go on, I think you’re even better because of it. I almost think it makes it harder (being eliminated by the eventual champ) because you feel like you were that close, you know?

Roy Halladay in Game 5 of the 2011 NLDS. (Mel Evans / Associated Press)

Rollins: I’ve often wondered that. When we lost, I don’t think I tuned back into baseball until Game 4 or 5 of the World Series. I stepped away. It was just too painful because we knew all we had to do was beat the Cardinals and it’s ours. There was no question. Beat the Cardinals and there’s no one else that can pitch with us or hit with us.

Hamels: The Cardinals were the hottest team in baseball. I mean, you’ve got to give it to them, they did win, but I 100 percent knew we were the best team and it just didn’t work out that way. That’s what sports is. But if we get over Game 5, we are going to steamroll teams. That was just a heartbreaking moment.

La Russa: To a lot of us, when we talk, probably the most compelling memory is the last out because who comes to bat in a one-run game but Howard. If you remember, the breaking pitch that Carp got him out on was not his best breaking pitch. I think Phillies fans could argue and the Phillies could argue that if he was hitting on two legs he might have been able to tie the game with the pitch he got.

Ryan Howard’s injury

Two weeks before the start of the NLDS, Howard received a cortisone shot to alleviate discomfort in his left foot stemming from bursitis. It had been bothering Howard. He sat out six consecutive games in late September, part of 11 total games he did not start during the final month of the season. The Cardinals were aware Howard wasn’t 100 percent healthy entering the NLDS. He had started only one of the four September regular-season games between the teams. Howard stepped to the plate with two outs in the ninth, one swing away from tying it in Game 5. But on a hanging curveball from Carpenter, Howard rolled over the top of the ball and hit a grounder to Cardinals second baseman Nick Punto. Howard immediately stumbled out of the box and eventually collapsed before he could run out the routine grounder that sealed St. Louis’ win. He suffered a career-altering Achilles’ tendon tear on the play. Howard would miss the first 84 games of the 2012 season, hampered after an infection developed that required another surgery and sidelined him longer.

Hamels: The way Ryan got injured, it was like, what just happened?

Ibañez: It was a really tragic moment. That was my last game as a Phillie, and I’ll never forget that image of going from, “Gosh, we just lost, I can’t believe it,” to “Oh my God, is Ryan OK?” Ryan’s injury had a huge impact on not just himself but on a club. That’s your run-producing No. 4 hitter, your big power guy and he went down like that.

La Russa: If you look at the replay, you don’t see us coaches because we didn’t dart out of there and go crazy. We were very respectful and concerned about Howard, a St. Louis guy. He had killed us.

Mozeliak: I actually remember seeing the groundball but then looking where’s the runner and seeing him on the ground. I was a closet Ryan Howard fan because of him growing up here in St. Louis. I always thought he represented himself really well. I was just shocked.

Howard: If it was going to go, it was going to go. That’s something you just can’t control. Even if we would have made it (past the NLDS), you’re trying to do precautionary stuff. You’re trying to rehabilitate it. But my Achilles was going to go. If it didn’t go then, it was going to go in the NLCS or potentially in a World Series game. Whenever the time was for it to go was when it was going to go.

Lidge: It was a harsh ending. Howie goes down. I don’t know where I’m going to be the next year. It was the end of a lot of things all in one moment. It was tough to watch. A lot of thoughts go through your mind over the next few days.

Manuel: I knew he was hurt pretty bad because Ryan wouldn’t tell you sometimes when he was hurting and he didn’t hardly ever go into the trainer’s room or anything like that. I found out real quick how serious it was. I knew it was going to be hard for him to be ready by spring training.

Rollins: In 2007 when I said we were the team to beat (in the division) during fan fest and as a message to my team, it was a feeling I had. It was a literal belief. Every part of me, it was like something I couldn’t shake. When Ryan grounded out and tore his Achilles, after the game I called my agent and I’m like, “It’s over.” I told my dad it’s over. And they’re like, “What are you talking about?” I’m like, “It’s over. I don’t think you understand.” It’s not like I was ordained to be “we’re the team to beat” guy, but in that moment the feeling was the same. Whatever feeling I had that came over me in 2007, I felt it leave. When we lost and Ryan got hurt, I don’t know what happened, I don’t know why it happened, I just knew that it was done. Whatever we just had, it’s a wrap. It’s over. My agent was like, “No, you guys will come back.” I’m like, “Dude, you don’t understand what I’m saying. It’s over, period.”

Amaro: The injury was just another layer of negativity and sadness and finality in a lot of ways.

Mackanin: It was almost like a harbinger of things to come.

The end of an era

The Phillies were never the same after that Game 5. A year later, they finished .500 and in third place in the NL East — their lowest in the division standings since 2003 — sitting 17 games out of first place. Then, 120 games into 2013, Manuel was fired after the Phillies lost for the 15th time in 20 games. Third base coach Ryne Sandberg took over as interim manager, a move that became permanent and eventually ended abruptly 2 1/2 months into the 2015 season when Sandberg resigned. The Phillies committed to a rebuild at this point; Amaro, fired at the end of the ’15 season, made two final notable moves as GM, unloading Hamels to the Rangers in an eight-player July trade deadline deal and trading Chase Utley to the Dodgers that August. By 2016, only Howard and catcher Carlos Ruiz remained from the 2011 starters.

Mozeliak: From just a pure baseball standpoint, it’s probably one of the greatest games you could watch. And obviously, being part of the Cardinals it ended well for us, but there’s no doubt it was a pivotal game for both teams. There were so many subtleties where people were with their careers. Simply put, both organizations’ trajectory changed. I wonder what (losing Game 5) would have done to our negotiation with (Pujols). When you think about sort of franchise-altering decisions, would that have had a different outcome? We obviously had a good core of players, which allowed us to continue to have success even after Albert’s departure, but maybe something might have changed in that negotiation or a different level of pressure to retain him. I don’t know.

Amaro: It’s the beauty of the game, right? Not necessarily the best team has to win. Any team can win a game at any point. And I mean, that’s why it’s important to have these series because you get to have an idea of which team is playing the best at that time. I mean, you can look at it the same way in 2008 because, on paper, you wouldn’t look at our club — even though we had a very good club — as the best team in baseball (the year we won the World Series). That was probably Boston.

Rollins: Whatever that era was, it wasn’t happening again, at least not while this team is together. And then you look at what happened. People getting traded away. This guy goes there, this guy goes there. So maybe subconsciously I knew all these things were going to transpire. Obviously, we don’t have enough money to keep everybody in the organization, so maybe all those things were part of it. But more than that, it was just that magic, that feeling of this is our time — it was gone. It went out the window.

Manuel: I remember very well when Roy joined our team, he made it a thing that everybody knew that he came in expecting to win a World Series. We got close, of course, but we didn’t get the big prize. That definitely makes you wonder sometimes. The game of baseball will make you wonder anyway.

Rollins: For sure I’ve thought about that all the time. I think everybody knew: If we get past the Cardinals, that was our toughest test. It just happened to be in the first round. We get past these Cardinals, we’re winning the World Series. There was no doubt in our mind. We just had to pass that test. And we didn’t. We didn’t.

Ibañez: It was my last year in Philly. It was heartbreaking on a personal note, because coming there, for three years, I wanted to be a part of a World Championship team and World Series team and I never got to win a World Series. 2009 and this year were very, very tough to swallow because I know if we didn’t run into the red-hot Cardinals, I felt that we had a really, really good shot of getting to the World Series and then anything could happen.

Amaro: At this point, we were deciding to make different types of moves organizationally, and we just couldn’t pick up the losses of those three great players. We had Chase (Utley) not 100 percent and not playing. We had Howard coming back not 100 percent. Doc went down. And then Cliff at one point went down. With those types of players, we just didn’t have the depth at that time to really overcome it. And it was unfortunate. A lot of things spiraled after that.

Hamels: In ’12, I was a free agent and I signed back because I was, like, this organization is one of the best, the fans are the best and this team is always going to be great and it just, I don’t know, things didn’t work out that way. And you cannot predict it.

Manuel: It was too bad because the injury to Ryan definitely played a part in his career. Not only did he have a real bad injury, but then when he came back, he never got his legs underneath him as far as being able to drive off his back side and hit against his front side. And then he started having trouble with both of his knees. It was hard for him to play every day.

Amaro: Howard really didn’t have an opportunity to use his legs after that injury. He was a different player and it was pretty clear. He tried to overcompensate and in a lot of different ways to be able to produce and his body really just didn’t let him. It was unfortunate. I mean, the interesting part about it was he was on schedule. We were very, very quietly going to allow him to come back very close to Opening Day in 2012. And then he contracted that infection that set him back, like years. With that infection he got, they had to cut out a lot of material, a lot of muscle in his calf such that it really affected the kinetic chain — it affected his ankles, his knees, his hips, all the way up the chain. For long term, it really affected the way he could perform as a professional athlete.

The what ifs

The decisions the Phillies made in the years after the 2011 NLDS eventually led to them overhauling the organization, top to bottom, under a new front office. Ownership determined this painful path was the only way to get the franchise back on the right track. But if they won that Game 5 and advanced, the belief, from many Phillies’ perspectives, is that another World Series title awaited them. It would have required beating the Brewers in the NL Championship Series and then, if things played out the same in the American League, taking on a Rangers team that battled St. Louis in an epic seven-game World Series. Perhaps they still would have fallen short. Maybe a Howard injury is still just as devastating. A third World Series appearance and second championship with this group might have made it easier to move on from the core with their legacies cemented. And, if that’s the case, the Phillies are able to avoid a challenging rebuild that has not yet yielded the expected dividends.

Amaro: Listen, had we won another World Series, would it have bought me more time to do things and an opportunity to figure out how to move forward? The injuries weren’t helpful for us as we aged. Some of the production kind of dropped off. There was going to be a time when there was going to be Cliff to have to deal with and we knew that was going to happen. We were hopeful that we were going to be able to stretch it out maybe another year or two. And the fact that we were hurt and unable to really move those guys, we decided it was time for us to try to ante up and hope that these guys get healthy enough so we had enough pitching to sustain us. We just couldn’t do it. I have to believe that things would have been a little different had Ryan Howard not gotten hurt, and Chase had not gotten hurt, we may have been able to stretch out our ability to get back to the playoffs again.

Lidge: Had we gone on to win the World Series, and maybe (Ryan Madson) is the last guy throwing then maybe we get him back. It’s tough to look back and say what if, but, man, that would have been amazing to have another run at a ring. I try not to think beyond that moment of losing Game 5 just because I think it’s hard enough to kind of just accept the moment. What ifs are really hard. What ifs never do us any good.

Mackanin: Well, let’s put it this way: had we won and gotten to the World Series and then we still had the year we had the following season, maybe I wouldn’t have gotten fired. (Laughs.)

Manuel: I thought we got a chance to win three World Series titles. If we could have just won another World Series I think there’s a lot of people’s careers who would have been different. Of course I believe that. It’s kind of funny how you still look at some of those things.

Amaro: We decided to trade (Shane) Victorino and Pence and basically bail on that 2012 season because we just didn’t feel we had the guns to do it. We tried to react when we thought our guys were back and healthy. But it’s probably a decision that we would take back. Because, really, you want to start regrouping probably a year early than a year late, and that’s kind of what we did. It took us until ’14 to decide it was time for us to make that move. But probably a bit too little, too late to do that.

Ibañez: Winning usually helps keep teams together and it helps teams make different decisions. And so, obviously not getting to the World Series, it had a significant impact on how the club went about things … they were still trying to win in 2012. But I think they would have been more inclined naturally to keep certain pieces and not let them get away from you because you just went to the World Series or won the World Series.

Amaro: I felt badly in a lot of ways about how things ended with Ryan. There was no better offensive player in all of baseball than Ryan Howard for five or six years and the fact that he was still fairly young, and he had to deal with this injury that really became very debilitating for him in a lot of ways, it struck to the character of the guy, unfortunately, because he’s such a good person. He had to endure a lot of public criticism and that was unfortunate. I felt badly for him because he really did epitomize what Philadelphia sports was about. He’s just very professional about it. Didn’t make excuses, wanted to go out and try to perform, he wanted to play to the contract like most real professionals do. He just wasn’t able to perform at that level anymore. And as much as he tried, he just was not able to do it.

Rollins: I know guys were looking to get their big payday that they deserved. Whether that was going to be with the Phillies or not, that would have been something to have paid attention to. When you lose, you know there’s going to be changes made because it’s like, OK, is this the end of it? Who can we sacrifice and who can we bring in to replace that player? But we win, you do have to make tougher decisions. The questions are still going to be there, but what you do about them is different.

Amaro: We had a big TV contract coming with Comcast and NBC. It would have been very tough to have our rights holders see us go into a complete breakdown and rebuild, so to speak, judging from the amount of money that they were going to have to pay to do that, so that was also a pretty major issue about some of the decisions that we made with re-upping on Jimmy Rollins and re-upping on Cole Hamels. In retrospect, even though they were iconic players for us, we may have made different decisions had the circumstances been different.

(Top photo of Howard: Alex Brandon / Associated Press)

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