One step closer: Phillies 7, Diamondbacks 4

The playoffs remain within their grasp

Sundays are lazy days. In the Philadelphia area, it’s been raining for most of the past two days, so they’re especially lazy days where the best thing to do is sit around and watch baseball. Luckily, the Phillies have cracked the code that is the Arizona Diamondbacks the past two games, meaning that with a win today, they would take the series and continue to pressure for both the division race and for the second wild card.

Ranger Suarez was on the hill to start things off for the Phillies. He was much better his last time out, lasting much longer than he normally had in his previous starts. He began today by sitting down Arizona in order in the first, then let his offense open up their day. The first two hitters reached via single and a walk to Jean Segura and J.T. Realmuto before Bryce Harper, for some reason, tried to bunt the ball and only ended up sacrificing them up a base each. Andrew McCutchen would drive Segura in with a single, then Freddy Galvis, with the bases loaded, lifted a sacrifice fly to center to make it 2-0 off of Madison Bumgarner, the Diamondbacks starter.

Suarez would not get a shutdown inning in the second, instead letting an RBI double to Jake McCarthy get the lead cut in half. He’d keep it there for the remainder of his outing, going 5 ¹⁄₃ innings, allowing only five hits, two walks and five strikeouts. The Phillies would grace him with another three runs in the bottom of the fifth thanks to “death by singles”, a way of scoring the Phillies aren’t exactly familiar with. Segura got one to lead off the inning, Harper got one with one out and McCutchen walked to load the bases. Jorge Bonifacio would step up and was lucky enough to find that the Diamondbacks must’ve forgotten the situation, letting their defense play for the double play, corners included. Bonifacio hit a spinner off of the end of the bat to first, but since Christian Walker was playing back, his only play was to get the out at first and allow the run to score. That would prove large because Freddy Galvis would come up and deliver with two outs.

Once Arizona got Suarez out of the game, they perked up a bit. Pavin Smith and Nick Ahmed for back-to-back doubles off of a very uncomfortable looking Connor Brogdon in the seventh inning, making the score 5-2. Brogdon never looked like he could sync up with what Rafael Marchan was calling, but he would get out of the inning further unscathed.

In the eighth, the Diamondbacks struck again, getting two runs off of Archie Bradley, who hasn’t pitched in a few days because of some shoulder issues and still didn’t look quite right in this outing either. Arizona was within one and it felt like a loss. However, the bottom of the lineup came up big in the Phillies’ half of the eighth. Freddy Galvis reached on an error by Josh Rojas, which was huge because Marchan would triple to centerfield, then Travis Jankowski tripled to the rightfield corner and the two runs the Diamondbacks got were reacquired, meaning the lead was safer.

Ian Kennedy would set Arizona down 1-2-3 in the ninth and the win was secured.

This was a much needed win and a very needed series victory. They’ll head to Washington tomorrow needing to win that series as well.