The early season Phillies had a rhythm: Good starting pitching and sprinkle in a few lockdown relief outings at the end and some clutch hitting and you got yourself a satisfying Phillies victory. Rinse and repeat over and over again and before we knew it, the Phillies were the best team in baseball.
The Phillies, since June, had lost their way. They are 32-34 since touching down back in the States from London on June 10 and 15-20 since the All-Star break. There’s no shying away from it, but the Phillies would like to start the process of putting their summer slump behind them and playing well now in the time where the games really start to matter.
If you’re interested in the exhausting exercise of continually contemplating whether or not the Phillies are truly “back,” Monday’s game seems like a good time to lean into it.
The Phillies, even after a pair of impressive wins over the weekend away from home against a good Kansas City team, played like they were back for good in Monday’s win against the Houston Astros.
National League Cy Young candidate Zack Wheeler overcame long innings early and powered through six, retiring the last seven batters faced after giving up a two-run double. The foursome of Orion Kerkering, Jeff Hoffman, Carlos Estévez and Matt Strahm combined to allow only two hits to keep the Astros scoreless. Kerkering induced nasty swings on his sweeper, Hoffman got a key double play, Estévez threw strikes and Strahm was nasty.
The Phillies bullied teams early in the season because their pitching staff had length. It was the way this same Astros franchise dominated them in the World Series two seasons ago and it has influenced the Phillies’ roster construction ever since.
Monday was a nice juxtaposition. Astros manager Joe Espada was aggressive early, pulling starter Ronel Blanco in the sixth for old friend Héctor Neris with two outs. Kaleb Ort, a 2024 camp arm for the Phillies in the midst of a breakout, got the first two outs of the seventh, then was pulled for a lefty with Bryce Harper due up. Bryan Abreu and Josh Hader took care of business in the eighth and ninth innings, but after Hader, Houston was down to just two relievers as the team operated with a six-man rotation and a man short in the bullpen.
It led Espada to stretch Hader to two innings. It wasn’t a bad idea, but Hader, who had allowed only one hit in the month of August, missed his spot against Harper on the first pitch. He was able to roll over a ball that found a hole to score the speedy enough Kyle Schwarber. Game over.
The Astros went for it, but the Phillies were the team that had more. That’s an encouraging sign considering that Monday resembled the kind of game they hope to play over and over again in October and November.
And over and over again, the Phillies hope their superstars are just that much better than whatever is on the other side. That’s why the most encouraging sign from Monday’s win is that Harper looks like he is finding his way out of the longest slump of his Phillies career.
Heading into the Kansas City series, Harper was batting only .210 with a .674 OPS since his return from the injured list with a hamstring injury on July 9. He had walked only eight times since July 19.
He is starting to feel his way out of it. His hardest hit ball of the night came on a double play in the first inning, but he swung and missed at only one of the 25 pitches he saw, a high slider in the strike zone. The pitches he did chase were fouled off. He worked out two walks in a game for the first time since July 13. He has doubled in four consecutive games.
That all sounds good, but Harper doesn’t find his recent success satisfying.
“Just another rollover,” Harper said about his walk-off hit. “ … I just need to stay through the baseball.”
“I think the way that he’s gone, he’s continuously working to figure out the best way to get the feel that he wants,” Schwarber said about Harper. “He got rewarded.”
Both Schwarber and Harper are methodical in their unique ways, but both heavily rely on feel in the batter’s box. Schwarber, who has had his own rough stretches this season, can empathize with Harper’s struggle to get it back.
“I could be doing all the same things it looks like in video, but it can feel way different,” Schwarber said. “That’s the thing about hitting. You’re trying to just find that feel. It’s one thing, it could be a couple things, but one thing could also lead to another. It’s the way this game works. It’s like ‘Okay, you feel this. Great.’ Then all of the sudden, it unlocks something else. It’s never a fun place to be in. When you do find that feel, you just hold on to it as long as you can.”
The Phillies and Harper would love to hold on to the feel and not let go until November, though it’s easier said than done.
With the formula to victory the Phillies mastered early in the season that’s starting to slowly make a comeback, it’s possible.
“We grinded our way to that win,” Schwarber said. “Gotta keep that feeling. Keep going through the rest of the series.”
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