Categories: 2023 Postgame Recaps

Outfield misplay looms large as Phillies drop series to Nats

Brandon Marsh’s third-inning miscue helped the Nationals to a grand slam. (Cheryl Pursell/Phillies Nation)

Ranger Suárez’s five-run outing in Sunday’s series finale against the Washington Nationals was, given the southpaw’s incredible month of June, an aberration.

One key play that helped four of those five runs come to be was not.

Stone Garrett’s grand slam in the top of the third was just the second career slam Suárez has allowed in his career. The Nationals had loaded the bases with the help of back-to-back walks, which almost never happens on Suárez’s watch.

But the whole rally got started with the continuation of an all-too-familiar trend. With one out and the bases empty, Derek Hill lifted a fly ball into left center field, an expected batting average of .090. It seemed like it would hold up long enough for Brandon Marsh to grab it, but Marsh, seemingly miscommunicating with Kyle Schwarber as the two outfielders closed in, took an awkward route, stumbled and let the ball drop no more than a couple feet in front of him.

It was a ball that should’ve been caught, and given that Garrett’s homer came with two outs, perhaps the Phillies would’ve left the inning unscathed. Instead, it helped give them a deficit they’d never erase in a series-losing 5-4 loss to the now 34-49 Nationals.

There aren’t exactly numbers to quantify it (though Schwarber’s -18 defensive runs saved might tell part of the story), but miscommunication feels like a continued problem for Marsh and Schwarber this season. On Sunday, it bit the Phillies, hard.

The offense — in predictable fashion, given last night’s explosion — also blew its fair share of opportunities. They put two on with no outs in the sixth, then two on with one out in the seventh and eighth, but double plays by Darick Hall, J.T. Realmuto and Marsh, respectively, soiled or ended those rallies.

That runner on second in the seventh was Nick Castellanos, who had doubled home Schwarber to cut the lead to one.

Castellanos also got the scoring started with a solo blast in the first. His 12 homers and 26 doubles trail his 2022 regular season totals by just one each, through 83 team games this season.

Realmuto — whose double play ended that seventh-inning rally — had helped build the early Phillies lead with a two-run homer of his own in the first, a 110-mph laser.

But Major League teams, even the basement-dwellers, will punish mistakes more often than not. The Phillies made a big one in the third inning, and it ultimately cost them the series.

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