LOS ANGELES — The end of a season always feels empty. The more suddenly the end comes, the emptier it feels. But it never feels emptier than when you are the one who is closest in proximity to it. In those moments, the emptiness has a weight that is yours and yours alone.

Early Thursday night, in one of the most iconic ballparks in baseball, against a backdrop of men in white jerseys exchanging hugs of celebratory disbelief, a solitary figure stood frozen to a patch of grass between the pitcher’s mound and home base. All around him flowed the disparate transitions of two teams at different ends, the field filling rapidly from one direction and emptying slowly in another. On the scoreboard in the distance, a 2-1 Phillies loss loomed above his head. Orion Kerkering stood there motionless, slumped forward at the waist.

“Just a horse [expletive] throw,” he’d say later, although he didn’t need to.

There is no less comfortable feeling than watching a grown man in the throes of panic. That is where Kerkering found himself with two outs in the bottom of the 11th inning of a game the Phillies needed to win in order to extend their season. His manager called on him to wiggle them out of a jam. Kerkering appeared to have done it, getting Andy Pages to ground back to the pitcher’s mound for what looked like the inning’s third out. But things quickly went sideways.

You could see that dreadful moment when Kerkering’s reaction began to outpace reality. Pages’ grounder struck him sharply in the foot, but it settled in plenty of time for an easy throw to first. By then, the panic had set in. He did not see J.T. Realmuto pointing toward first. He did not sense that Pages was less than halfway to first when he picked up the ball. He saw the winning run bearing down on home. Not until his wild throw home had left his hand did reality catch up. By then, the ball was sailing high and right and nowhere near its target.

“It just hit off my foot,” Kerkering said. “Once the pressure got to me, I just thought it was a faster throw to J.T., a little quicker throw than trying to throw cross the body to Bryce [Harper at first].”

His teammates stood in stunned disbelief. Kerkering bent forward, lowered his head, and grabbed the thighs of his sliding pants. Some Phillies disappeared into the tunnel. Others sat and watched the field. The Los Angeles Dodgers poured out of their dugout, manager Dave Roberts lifting his arms toward the sky, a grateful expression on his face.

The weight of what had just occurred was inescapable. The Phillies may have lost the first two games of this series, but by the latter stages of Game 4, they had little doubt that they were every bit the Dodgers’ equal. At one point, they had a 1-0 lead and were seven outs away from bringing the Dodgers back to Philadelphia for a decisive Game 5. This was a series between the two best teams in the National League, and both of them seemed to know it. No, the Phillies did not hit well enough. Yes, that has become a recurring problem. But this was also a series where they’d held the best player on the planet to 1 for 18 with nine strikeouts. The Phillies may not have hit well enough, but none was as bad as Shohei Ohtani.

Truth is, this was a series that was decided by a handful of moments, all or any one of which could have easily broken in a different direction. The Phillies lost too many of those moments. Kerkering’s was simply the last.

“I’m extremely proud of how they went about their business, and I’m proud that I’m their manager, to tell you the truth,” Rob Thomson said. “That goes for the coaching staff. It goes for all the support staff. Just a really elite group of people.”

In fact, you saw it in that final moment. The worst place to find yourself at the end of a season is inside the chalk outline. That is where Kerkering was standing as he stared down at the grass. He wasn’t standing alone for long.

Realmuto got there first. He put a gentle arm on his back and bent down toward him.

“I knew that a 24-year-old kid like that is probably feeling the weight of the world on his shoulders after that play,” the catcher said.

Nick Castellanos got there next. The only reason he wasn’t first is he was coming from right field. Three years earlier, Castellanos had his own moment with the emptiness after making the last out of the 2022 World Series. Once he lifted his head, he found coach Paco Figueroa waiting for him.

“It’s the only thing to do,” said Castellanos, whose RBI double in the top of the seventh had given the Phillies their 1-0 lead.

Next came Thomson, who waited by the dugout steps and then drew Kerkering in close.

“He just got caught up in the moment a little bit,” Thomson said. “Coming down the stretch there, he pitched so well for us. I feel for him because he’s putting it all on his shoulders. But we win as a team and we lose as a team.”

It continued like this well into the clubhouse. Kerkering packed his things in a bleary-eyed daze, the last one of them to shed his full uniform. Once in street clothes, he walked over to Cristopher Sánchez, who’d held the Dodgers to a single run in 6 1/3 innings. Kerkering held out his hand. Sánchez grabbed him by the shoulder. Soon, they were all on the buses, headed into the offseason together.

©2025 The Philadelphia Inquirer. Visit inquirer.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.