Lately, the sixth inning has a mean streak. It waits until everything looks settled, then taps the shoulder of a game and says: not yet. On Saturday night in Phoenix, it found Aaron Nola again—two batters, two doubles, one lead gone—and the Phillies’ 4–3 loss felt like another chapter in baseball’s favorite plot twist.
The night even started like a getaway day postcard. Harrison Bader drew a four-pitch walk, Kyle Schwarber rifled a double into the gap, J.T. Realmuto lifted a sacrifice fly, and the Phillies led 2–0 before Zac Gallen had a chance to exhale. Arizona chipped back—Corbin Carroll’s RBI single in the first, Ketel Marte’s in the third—but when Alec Bohm tomahawked a center-cut fastball 412 feet to dead center in the fourth, it was 3–2 and felt like one of those Nola nights where the right-hander finds the cruise control.
Then came the inning with the bad manners.
With one out in the sixth, Blaze Alexander smoked a double off the wall. James McCann followed with a ringing double to the alley to tie it. That ended Nola’s night at 5⅓ innings, seven hits, four runs, two walks, four strikeouts—another start where the line tells the story of traffic that never quite cleared. Tanner Banks came in, got a strikeout, then watched Ildemaro Vargas parachute a single into left to score McCann with the run that stood up. Arizona 4, Philadelphia 3. Door closed, lesson repeated.
If this felt familiar, that’s because it is: Nola has now allowed at least four runs in three of his last four starts. The one outlier? A gem against the Mets on Sept. 8. It’s the timing as much as the totals—so many of the crooked numbers arriving just as the Phillies need a bridge to the back end. October keeps circling this question in red ink: what happens in the fifth and sixth?
Give Gallen credit. After that wobbly first, he turned their lineup into a math problem—seven innings, four hits, nine strikeouts, just the Bohm mistake—and he handed it to a bullpen that hasn’t exactly been a sure thing. John Curtiss, who now owns one of the quietest “first save of the year” footnotes you’ll see in late September, took the last three outs.
The Phillies had their chances to flip the script. They stranded two in the seventh after an error gave them life. They put the tying run on base in the eighth, only for Bohm—already 2-for-2 with that go-ahead homer earlier—to fly out. Bryson Stott singled with two outs in the ninth and was left there, a final reminder that sometimes the last 90 feet can feel like 900.
So what do we do with a game like this? If you’re the Phillies, you file it under “data points.” They’ve clinched the NL East, but the Brewers have nudged three games ahead in the race for the National League’s best record, and that matters in a month where flight paths and first-pitches become chess pieces. Arizona, meanwhile, is alive because of a sixth inning that refused to behave. Baseball, right? It always knows where to put the irony.
Now comes the rubber match at Chase Field, with Ranger Suárez taking the ball and the Phillies still playing for October positioning as much as for another series win. And somewhere, surely, a sixth inning is clearing its throat.
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