The Fightins: Derek Hill delivers a pinch-hit go-ahead homer in the 9th, Phillies beat the Nats 5-4
The Phillies were down to their final strike for the second consecutive night at Nationals Park on Wednesday and for the second consecutive night they refused to lose because Derek Hill, the guy the Phillies acquired from the White Sox 13 days ago for two prospects nobody had heard of, stepped to the plate as a pinch hitter with a toothpick in his mouth and launched a 1-2 pitch over the high wall in right field for a go-ahead two-run homer that gave the Phillies a 5-4 win and completed back-to-back nights of ninth-inning magic that have no rational explanation beyond this team simply refusing to accept defeat under any circumstances.
Hill knew the ball had enough the second it left the bat, leaping between second and third base and pointing toward the Phillies’ bullpen in celebration while the rest of the team exploded out of the dugout because the guy who was acquired as organizational depth and a right-handed platoon option against lefties just hit the biggest homer any Phillie has hit all season in a situation where the game was literally one strike away from being over.
Duran came in and closed out the ninth because that’s what Duran does and the Phillies walked out of Nationals Park with a 5-4 win that felt every bit as improbable as Tuesday’s 14-9 comeback even though the margin was significantly smaller.
Two nights in a row the Phillies have been down to their final strike and two nights in a row they’ve found a way to win with late-inning heroics from players who weren’t even in the starting lineup.
Tuesday it was eight runs with two outs in the ninth featuring Marsh’s game-tying homer and Stott’s three-run shot. Wednesday it was Hill coming off the bench to hit a go-ahead two-run bomb against a left-hander in the exact matchup situation the Phillies acquired him for. This team is possessed right now and I don’t have a better word for what’s happening in Washington this week.
The Schwarber Walk Set the Whole Thing Up
Schwarber had been scratched before Tuesday’s game with lower back tightness and was out of Wednesday’s starting lineup as well, but he felt better as the day went on, took swings in the cage, and told the Phillies he could be available off the bench if they needed him.
Both Schwarber and Hill were in the cage together during the ninth inning preparing for possible matchups because this is a team that stays ready even when guys aren’t in the lineup, which is the kind of bench preparation that Mattingly has instilled since taking over.
Schwarber came in to pinch-hit and worked a 10-pitch walk that kept the inning alive and forced the Nationals to make a pitching change, bringing in lefty Richard Lovelady for his third straight relief appearance.
Mattingly countered by sending Hill up from the bench to get the left-on-left matchup that the Phillies wanted, which is exactly the kind of chess move that the Hill acquisition was designed to facilitate.
The Phillies traded for Hill specifically to have a right-handed bat who could handle left-handed pitching and 13 days after the trade he delivered the biggest swing of the series against a lefty reliever in the ninth inning of a one-run game.
Hill’s first homer as a Phillie and it came as a pinch hitter on a 1-2 count against a left-hander with the game on the line in the ninth inning on the road.
Derek Hill – RING IT
You can’t script that kind of debut moment and Mattingly said afterward that the Phillies have quickly learned that Hill stays ready for whatever role they need him in, which is the highest compliment a manager can give a bench player because it means the coaching staff trusts him in high-leverage situations even though he’s been on the roster for less than two weeks.
Nola Was Nola and That’s Both Good and Bad
Nola gave up two solo homers in his first two innings, one six pitches into his outing to Luis GarcÃa Jr. and another three pitches into the second inning, making it his third straight start allowing two homers.
The guy’s home run problem this season has been persistent enough that opposing hitters are clearly sitting on pitches in certain counts and Nola keeps leaving mistakes in the zone that get punished.
Unlike some of his earlier outings where the homers would snowball into a five-run inning and a short start that burned the bullpen, Nola worked through five innings and limited the damage to just those two runs.
Fifty-four percent of the balls put in play against him were hit at 95 mph or harder with an average exit velocity of 95 mph, which tells you the contact quality was terrible and Nola was fortunate that most of the hard-hit balls found gloves instead of gaps.
He handed the bullpen a lead after five innings and on a night where the Phillies needed every run they could get, keeping the game at 2-0 instead of letting it balloon to 5-0 was the difference between a comeback win and a blowout loss.
Nola isn’t going to fix himself this season and the Phillies have accepted that the guy they’re getting right now is a five-inning pitcher who gives up hard contact and homers but can limit the damage enough to keep games competitive if the offense shows up behind him. That’s not what you want from a $25 million starter but it’s what the Phillies have and they’re winning games despite it because the rest of the team picks him up the way they picked him up Wednesday night.
The Phillies’ Fourth-Inning Rally Was Classic Small Ball
Marsh led off the fourth with a single before Bohm reached on a fielding error after fouling a ball off his own foot earlier in the at-bat, which is the kind of at-bat that tests a hitter’s toughness and Bohm fought through the pain to stay in the box and reach base.
Stott followed by turning on a low-and-in slider from Miles Mikolas at 106.2 mph that sailed over the head of Nationals right fielder James Wood to score Marsh from second before Realmuto hit a sac fly to tie the game and Rincones jumped on Mikolas’ first pitch for a run-scoring single through the middle that gave the Phillies a 3-2 lead.
That inning was the opposite of the ninth-inning fireworks because it was built on singles, errors, sacrifice flies, and situational hitting from the bottom of the order rather than dramatic homers with the game on the line.
Rincones continues to look comfortable at the plate with the kind of aggressive first-pitch approach that suggests the kid isn’t going to be overwhelmed by the moment regardless of how long he’s been in the big leagues, and his run-scoring single through the middle was exactly the type of at-bat the Phillies need from the right-field spot while Garcia is on the 60-day IL.
Curtis Mead Keeps Haunting the Phillies and That Needs to Stop
Former Phillies prospect Curtis Mead hit a two-run homer in the sixth off Bowlan to give the Nationals a 4-3 lead, which was his second homer in three games during the series after his two-run shot on Tuesday contributed to the gut-punch eighth inning that preceded the Phillies’ eight-run ninth.
Bowlan left a sweeper up in the zone and Mead crushed it into the left-field seats because that’s what happens when you leave a hanging sweeper to a hitter who was good enough to be a Phillies prospect before the organization moved on from him.
Mead going off against the Phillies in a Nationals uniform is the kind of subplot that would be infuriating if the Phillies hadn’t won both games he homered in, but watching a former farmhand torch the organization that let him go is never a great look even when the final score goes your way.
The Phillies have bigger things to worry about than Curtis Mead’s revenge tour but someone needs to tell Bowlan to stop leaving sweepers up in the zone to right-handed hitters because that pitch got crushed Tuesday and it got crushed again Wednesday.
The 9th Inning FIGHTINS
Tuesday the Phillies scored eight runs with two outs in the ninth to overcome a two-run deficit after already blowing a lead in the eighth. Wednesday they trailed by one going into the ninth and a pinch hitter who has been on the roster for 13 days hit a go-ahead two-run homer on a 1-2 count against a left-hander to win the game on their final strike.
Two consecutive nights where the Phillies were staring at a loss and responded by producing the exact swing they needed at the exact moment they needed it from players who weren’t even in the starting lineup.
Mattingly said afterward that these experiences reinforce a lesson that players have to live through for themselves because you can’t teach a team how to fight back from the brink by drawing it up on a whiteboard.
The fight has to be experienced in real time with real stakes and real consequences, and the Phillies have now experienced it on back-to-back nights in a way that is going to carry forward into every close game for the rest of the season because this group now knows with absolute certainty that they are never out of a game regardless of the score or the inning or how many outs are left.
The Phillies are 44-35 and headed home after taking three of four from the Nationals in a series where they trailed in the ninth inning of consecutive games and won both of them through the kind of fight and resilience that championship teams display in October.
If this is what the Phillies look like in June, imagine what they’ll look like when the games actually matter in September and October with a playoff spot on the line and a crowd at Citizens Bank Park behind every swing.
Look, I know it’s the Nationals but I think it’s fair to say that when you win games like this, the clubhouse believes that they are never out of it. Now The Fights are here and this team won’t quit. Tuesday proved it. Wednesday confirmed it.
The rest of the National League should be paying attention because the Phillies under Mattingly are the most dangerous team in baseball when the game is on the line and the clock is running out.
Join The Chase
Read More
The Phillies win probability chart vs the Nationals is absolutely insane
The Phillies produced the third-most two-out runs by any team…
The Fightins: Phillies score eight runs with two outs in the ninth, turn 8-6 deficit to 14-9 win vs Nationals
The Phillies trailed 8-6 with two outs in the top…
Standings Update: Phillies continue to close the gap in the NL East on a beat up Braves team, but the Wild Card wouldn’t be too bad either
I’m going to say something that might sound crazy given…
Comments (0)