Better late than never: Phillies 7, Diamondbacks 2

It’s about time they hit Brandon Pfaadt

Where were you when Aaron Nola turned his season around?

After having an outstanding start last Sunday in Chicago, the hopes were that Nola would be able to approach, much less repeat, his performance. Heck, maybe even we could hope the offense would give him something resembling run support?

Well, we were all in luck this Saturday night. Through the raindrops, the offense came alive, actually doing something positive against Brandon Pfaadt and giving the Phillies another series win.

The fun started in the second inning. Nick Castellanos singled to open the frame for the Phillies, bringing up Max Kepler. Kepler, of course, had a wonderfully productive night last night and continued again tonight. He homered off of Pfaadt and giving the Phillies a 2-0 lead.

Yet! The offense wasn’t done. J.T. Realmuto doubled, Alec Bohm singled and Brandon Marsh, freshly off of the injured list, doubled himself to score Realmuto and give the team another run.

However, the offense wouldn’t get another run in the inning, even with no one out, and those types of missed opportunities usually come back to haunt the team. But with Nola pitching like his past self, that didn’t seem to be a problem. He has a lot of his stuff working and while the Diamondbacks did run up his pitch count pretty high, he held them at bay.

In the third inning, Realmuto came up with two runners on and a chance to do some damage himself. Realmuto has not had much of a season that would be considered good offensively, but as a slow starter, he might also just need some time to get started. Tonight, he got a hanging curveball from Pfaadt and blasted it through the rain, making the score 6-0.

The Phillies would get another in the fourth on a two out fielding error that pushed Trea Turner across and made it 7-0. And that was that for a few innings. The score stayed that way for quite a while as Pfaadt settled down and Nola kept the Arizona offense at bay, but things have to come to a close. Nola exited after six innings of excellent work, bringing in Carlos Hernandez for some work. You know what happens then. Hernandez gave up a garbage time home run to Lourdes Gurriel, Jr. to put Arizona on the board.

However, the rest of the game was a march to the end. Hernandez settled down, Tanner Banks rolled out another solid inning and Joe Ross closed it down to end the game and give the game to the Phillies. They’re playing good baseball right now and with a schedule that makes things a bit easier, it would behoove them to put some wins in the ledger.

They’ll close out the series tomorrow with Ranger Suarez making his return to the mound.