Phillies Rally, Ryan Helsley's 9th-Inning Meltdown Stuns Twitter as Cardinals Drop G1

The St. Louis Cardinals were two outs away from victory before a meltdown by Ryan Helsley opened the door for the Philadelphia Phillies to claim a 6-3 win Friday in the National League Wild Card Series.

The 2022 All-Star closer entered in the eighth inning with a two-run cushion. He got his first two batters out and opened the ninth by striking out Rhys Hoskins.

That's when the tide slowly began turning against St. Louis.

J.T. Realmuto got a base hit followed by walks to Bryce Harper and Nick Castellanos. With nowhere to put him, Helsley hit Alec Bohm with a pitch to bring home Realmuto and make it a 2-1 game.

Manager Oliver Marmol pulled Helsley after the right-hander was looked at by the team trainer. Bringing on Andre Pallante didn't help matters as he immediately surrendered a two-run single to Jean Segura.

Philadelphia continued pouring on the offense. It was a shocking turnaround after everybody left the Phillies for dead.

Losing Game 1 in a three-game series is obviously costly, and now, the Cardinals might be without their best reliever for the remainder of the round. Even assuming he's healthy, Helsley threw 33 pitches and at the very least is out of the picture for Game 2.

The rest of the team has to recover emotionally as well from losing a game they were so close to winning.

St. Louis will look to bounce back in Game 2, which gets underway Saturday at 8:37 p.m. ET.