For seven innings Monday night, Andrew Abbott was writing his own “Phillies-can’t-touch-me” script.
Then came two outs in the eighth. And two guys at the bottom of the lineup who just refuse to play like the bottom of the lineup.
Edmundo Sosa. Weston Wilson.
One tied it. One gave them the lead.
Then the heavy artillery finished it.
Sosa stayed alive long enough to slap a 2-2 fastball into right field. Wilson followed with a double down the left-field line — the kind that forces you to run on instinct. Sosa never stopped, motoring from first and sliding home to tie it.
That one swing flipped the lineup back to the top, and the Reds’ night began to unravel. Trea Turner rolled an RBI single through the left side to put the Phillies in front. Abbott’s evening was over. And one pitch later, Kyle Schwarber made sure the momentum never came back.
Schwarber turned on a Tony Santillan offering and sent it screaming into the seats in right for home run No. 42 — a two-run blast that not only capped a four-run eighth but also vaulted him past Shohei Ohtani into the National League lead. Only Seattle’s Cal Raleigh (45) has more in all of baseball.
That rally wiped out a gem from Abbott (8-3), who had retired the first 12 Phillies he faced and needed just 83 pitches to get through seven innings. He was one out from eight scoreless before the Sosa-Wilson-Turner-Schwarber sequence turned a 1-0 deficit into a 4-1 Phillies win — their fourth straight, and one that pushed their NL East lead over the idle Mets to a season-high six games.
Abbott’s only blemish before the eighth came in the fifth, when J.T. Realmuto doubled to break up the perfecto. He’d been given a first-inning lead when TJ Friedl doubled and scored on Gavin Lux’s RBI single off Taijuan Walker, who settled in for six innings of one-run ball.
Walker now has a 3.31 ERA over 14 starts.
Jordan Romano (2-4) picked up the win in relief, and Orion Kerkering worked a clean ninth for his third save.
Same 118-game record as last year (69-49). Same swagger. And, right now, the same knack for making their opponents pay when they think they’re almost out of trouble.
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