Seven Doubles, Seven Different Hitters: Phillies beat the Nationals 7-3
The Phillies came into Thursday night off a deflating extra-inning loss and immediately took their frustration out on poor Miles Mikolas, who never stood a chance.
It felt like there was a Phillie standing on second base every single time you looked up early in this game, and that’s because there basically was. In the first three innings alone, the Phillies stroked SEVEN doubles off Mikolas, tying the most two-baggers through three innings in the entire history of the franchise.
Seven doubles, seven different hitters, something that’s happened just three times since 1920 and not once since May 4, 2000.
They Squared Him Up All Night
The writing was on the wall before first pitch. Almost the entire Phillies lineup came in mashing Mikolas, a 37-year-old, old-school, pitch-to-contact guy who lives in the zone, and when his velocity was down Thursday, it was a slaughter. The Phillies got pitch after pitch to hit and refused to miss any of them.
And the whiff numbers tell the whole story. The Phillies swung 42 times against Mikolas and came up empty on just four of them. Four. That’s a 9.5 percent whiff rate against a pitcher who walked in with the worst swing-and-miss rate in all of baseball.
They put 23 balls in play, hammered 11 of them hard, and even while getting out in front, they kept finding the gaps and lining shots down the foul lines for extra bases. This wasn’t a barrage of no-doubt homers. This was a lineup that hit it where it was pitched and doubled a bad pitcher into oblivion. Sixteen hits, eight doubles, seven runs. Clinical.
Welcome Back, Kyle Schwarber
One of the best signs of the night was Kyle Schwarber snapping a six-game hitless skid with a couple of hits, including a double and an RBI, and looking more and more comfortable as the game went on.
The big fella has been dragging lately, and this lineup is exponentially more terrifying when he’s right. If Thursday was the start of Schwarber catching fire again, look out, because this offense was already rolling without him.
Sanchez Grinded Out an Ugly One for Win No. 15
Cristopher Sanchez didn’t have his best stuff, and that’s worth keeping an eye on. He threw 98 pitches over five innings of two-run ball, leaned heavily on the sinker against a righty-heavy Nationals lineup, and got a ton of ground balls, but the command on his changeup and slider wasn’t crisp.
He threw just 57 percent strikes, his second-lowest mark of the season behind only his last start in Baltimore, and the sharpness that fueled his scoreless-innings run earlier just hasn’t been there the last couple of times out.
Even when he doesn’t have it, he finds a way. The fifth inning got dicey with two on and one out, and he wiggled out of it, limited the damage, and left with the lead.
That’s now his MLB-leading 15th win, and he sits second in all of baseball in innings pitched. He’s not overpowering people at the moment, but the guy competes his tail off and keeps handing the bullpen leads. I’ll take it every time.
The Phillies Slap Hitter Revolution
This is the part that has me genuinely fired up. Luis Arraez and Justin Crawford are two of the most old-school hitters in the sport, and together they’re transforming what this Phillies offense actually is.
Neither one needs to crush the ball to do damage. Arraez bumped his NL-leading average up to .326 with another multi-hit night, and here’s the crazy part, he came into Thursday with just four barrels all season and one of the lowest barrel rates in the entire league.
Crawford’s right there with him near the bottom in barrel rate too. They don’t need to barrel anything. They just put the ball in play, they almost never swing and miss, and they force the defense to actually make plays.
That is a completely different animal for a Phillies lineup that has lived and died on the three-run homer in every recent October and mostly died on it when the bats went cold. Bolting Arraez and Crawford onto a core built around power gives this offense a real blend of contact, speed, and thump that it simply hasn’t had. The lineup on Thursday looked longer, deeper, and a whole lot tougher to navigate, and that’s exactly the point.
Just The Nationals, But This Was Different
For years, this lineup has been all-or-nothing. Bash a couple homers and win, or go quiet and lose. Thursday night was the blueprint for what iat can be now: a lineup that grinds at-bats, sprays doubles into every gap, and keeps the line moving even when nobody’s trotting around the bases.
That’s the version that wins in October, because the power-only approach has burned this team over and over when the postseason pitching tightens up.
It wasn’t a flawless night, to be fair. The Phillies got two runners thrown out at the plate and left some runs on the table early. But when you rack up 16 hits and eight doubles, you can afford to run yourself into a couple of outs and still cruise.
This is the offense we were promised when Dombrowski added the contact bats. Sanchez battling for his 15th win, Schwarber showing a pulse, Arraez being an absolute pest at the top of the average leaderboard, and the whole group suddenly looking like a nightmare to get through.
The rotation questions haven’t gone anywhere, and I’m not pretending they have. But the lineup? Thursday was a loud, doubles-soaked glimpse of exactly what this thing can become.
Seven doubles in three innings. A record that stood since the year 2000 tied. A deeper, meaner lineup coming into focus at exactly the right time. Give me more of this all August long.
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