The first fastball Jeff Hoffman threw Austin Riley was close. Riley took it for a ball. Hoffman threw him another at 98 mph and Riley swung through it. The Phillies entered this National Division League Series with a plan to attack the mighty Braves with velocity, so when Riley took another slider in the dirt to even the count at 2-2 in the eighth inning, J.T. Realmuto called for the heater.

Realmuto wanted Hoffman to elevate it, but Hoffman yanked the fastball. Full count. The door was open; it’s the tiniest things that hurt because, for hours Monday night, the Phillies had a chance to slam the door on the team with the best record in baseball. Hoffman had not located his fastball — he threw only one in his Game 1 appearance — and Realmuto had a choice to make against a great hitter.

The Phillies had avoided the bottom of the strike zone all night against an Atlanta lineup so skilled at hitting those pitches. Riley saw the 3-2 slider and maybe he was expecting a fastball because he swung almost one-handed.

It still landed in the seats. Braves 5, Phillies 4 — and it’s a series.

“His slider has been his bread and butter,” Realmuto said. “In that situation, just have to trust the slider. Had he executed the (previous) fastball a little bit better, I might have gone with it again. But the way he threw the 2-2 one, it was just not competitive. I didn’t want him to raise it just a little bit and it not be up enough. So we went with his best pitch there and got beat with it.”

That’ll happen. It just shouldn’t have happened Monday because the Phillies built a four-run lead but squandered too many chances to pad it. They left 11 men on base in the game’s first seven innings. Maybe the Phillies pushed Zack Wheeler two batters too long in the seventh inning. Maybe Trea Turner’s bobble in the sixth granted the lifeless Braves a jolt. Maybe Bryce Harper shouldn’t have assumed that Nick Castellanos’ drive to right-center in the ninth would have evaded Michael Harris II’s glove.

Maybe Hoffman should have thrown Riley another fastball instead of a slider that hung a little.

“You get a lead against a team like that and you have put them away,” Realmuto said. “We just weren’t able to do it today. We had plenty of opportunities with guys in scoring position to extend our lead. It just felt like every inning that we didn’t do that, it gave them a little more chance and a little more momentum.”

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