Phillies beat White Sox 8-6 and that’s 14 runs in 2 days from the 29th-ranked offense in baseball
The Phillies beat the White Sox 8-6 Friday night at Citizens Bank Park in front of a sellout crowd of 43,232 on a 90-degree night that felt like the offense finally remembered it plays Major League Baseball for a living.
Eight runs. Two homers. A bases-loaded rally in the seventh. Fourteen runs over the last two games after 13 straight games without scoring five.
The Phillies are now 34-29 and have eight wins over their last 10 games, riding a four-game winning streak. Not bad for a team that was 9-19 and had its manager fired six weeks ago.
The Offense Did Something Two Days in a Row and I’m Suspicious
The Phillies rank 29th in baseball in runs scored this season. Only one team in the sport has scored fewer runs. That number has been hanging over every game like a storm cloud for months while the pitching staff has performed CPR on the offense night after night.
Then the last two games happened.
Six runs Thursday to sweep the Padres. Eight runs Friday against the White Sox. Fourteen combined in two games from an offense that was averaging 2.46 runs per game two weeks ago.
Brandon Marsh hit a two-run homer in the second. Garcia went deep for the second straight game in the fourth. The lineup scored five runs in the second inning alone. The Phillies had a 6-3 lead in the middle of the game and for the first time in weeks, the pitching staff didn’t need to throw a shutout just to give the team a chance.
Brandon Marsh. RING IT.
Garcia’s homer was the one that stood out. Second day in a row. The bat flip Thursday was a 429-foot pimp job that might have been the most fun at-bat of the season.
Friday he went deep again. Two homers in two days from a guy hitting .195 who hadn’t gone yard since May 6th before Thursday. If Garcia is starting to find it, the lineup gets significantly deeper from the right side.
Mattingly said Thursday he saw signs of Garcia building confidence. Friday backed it up. Whether this is the start of a real turnaround or a two-game heater remains to be seen but I’ll take whatever we can get from the right side of the plate.
The Phillies 7th Inning Rally
The White Sox tied it at 6-6 in the top of the seventh on an unearned run that Bowlan created with his own throwing error. Momentum completely swung to Chicago. A sellout crowd that had been loud all night went quiet. The kind of moment where a team that’s been scraping by on pitching and prayers folds and loses a game it should have won.
Instead, Schwarber singled to lead off the bottom of the seventh. Turner walked. Harper singled. Bases loaded, nobody out, against White Sox reliever Bryan Hudson. Sosa hit a sac fly to shallow left and Schwarber scored from third with a headfirst slide that just beat the throw.
The go-ahead run scored on a 90-foot sprint and a headfirst dive from Kyle Schwarber. The man who leads the majors in home runs is also apparently willing to go full Pete Rose to score a run from third on a shallow sac fly. That’s the mentality this team has been playing with under Mattingly.
Then Seranthony Dominguez, now pitching for the White Sox because life comes at you fast, uncorked a wild pitch that scored Turner from third. 8-6 Phillies. Two runs in the seventh. Neither on a homer. Manufactured runs from a team that has been homer-or-bust for most of the season.
Luzardo Wasn’t Sharp and It Didn’t Matter
Luzardo gave up five runs over six innings. Walked two. Hit a batter. Gave up three solo homers, two to Randal Grichuk. Not his best night. Not even close. The stuff was inconsistent and Grichuk was sitting on everything he threw.
The offense gave him enough breathing room that a mediocre Luzardo start didn’t turn into a loss. That’s the difference between the last two games and the previous 13. When the offense scores eight runs, the starter doesn’t need to be perfect.
Luzardo can give up five and the Phillies still win because the lineup produced enough to absorb the damage. When you’re scoring 2.46 runs per game, one bad inning from the starter ends the night. When you’re scoring eight, the starter just has to keep the game within reach.
The bullpen cleaned up after him. Keller survived a mess in the eighth. Duran went 15-for-15 in save chances with a scoreless ninth. The formula held even on a night when the starting pitching wasn’t dominant because the offense gave the bullpen something to protect.
4-0 on the Homestand.
The Phillies are 4-0 on this homestand with two more against the White Sox. Painter goes Saturday afternoon. The temperature is supposed to be in the 90s again. The crowd has been selling out. The vibes at Citizens Bank Park are completely different from where they were six weeks ago when this team was the laughingstock of the National League.
The offense showing up two games in a row doesn’t erase the fact that they still rank 29th in runs scored. Two games of production doesn’t fix a two-month problem. But the seventh-inning small ball Thursday against the Padres, the manufactured runs Friday against the White Sox, and Garcia going deep in back-to-back games are all signs that the lineup might be turning a corner heading into the heart of the summer.
The pitching has been carrying this team since late April. If the offense can carry even a fraction of the load going forward, the Phillies are going to be a very dangerous team in the Wild Card race.
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