LOS ANGELES — Eyes red, Orion Kerkering received words of support from his Philadelphia Phillies teammates.
“‘Just keep your head up. It’s an honest mistake. Just, it’s baseball,’” he remembered hearing.
“`You’ll be good for a long time to come,’” they added.
“It’s not my fault, then. We had opportunities to score,” was the message he kept getting.
Kerkering made a wild throw past home plate instead of tossing to first after mishandling Andy Pages’ bases-loaded comebacker with two outs in the 11th inning. Pinch-runner Hyeseong Kim scored and the Phillies were eliminated with a 2-1 loss that gave the Los Angeles Dodgers a 3-1 NL Division Series victory.
“It means a lot. It shows they care a lot,” Kerkering said of his teammates. “It just means everything, for sure.”
Kerkering won’t fo