The Phillies were down to their final strike again, because apparently that is where they prefer to conduct business now.
Not in the third inning. Not with room to breathe. Not with the clean geometry of an ordinary baseball game.
They waited until the ninth inning Wednesday night at Nationals Park, waited until the Washington Nationals were one pitch from locking down a win, waited until the tying run was standing at first and a part-time outfielder acquired two weeks earlier was walking to the plate with the game reduced to one swing.
Then Derek Hill turned on the kind of pitch that changes a night, changes a clubhouse, and maybe changes the way a team sees itself.
Hill’s pinch-hit, two-run homer in the ninth lifted the Phillies to a 5-4 win over the Nationals, one night after they scored eight runs with two outs in the ninth to steal a 14-9 victory from the same team in the same ballpark.
Two nights. Two ninth innings. Two reminders that this version of the Phillies, flawed as it has been, still has a pulse that gets loudest when the game is supposed to be over.
This one was not an explosion. It was not Tuesday night’s baseball avalanche, when the Phillies turned a loss into a track meet. This one was smaller, tighter, stranger, and in some ways more revealing.
Kyle Schwarber did not start for the second straight night because of lower back tightness. He entered as a pinch-hitter with two outs in the ninth and worked a walk against Orlando Ribalta. It was the kind of plate appearance that can get lost beneath the noise of the homer that follows, but it was the plate appearance that made the homer possible.
Washington went to left-hander Richard Lovelady. Don Mattingly went to Hill, who hit for Justin Crawford. Hill fell behind 1-2, fouled off a pitch, and then got the mistake the Phillies had spent the inning trying to force.
Lovelady left a fastball where a major-league hitter can do damage. Hill drove it the other way, into the right-center seats, for his first home run as a Phillie and the biggest swing of his brief time with the club.
There was no mystery about the assignment when the Phillies acquired Hill from the White Sox earlier this month. He was not brought here to save a season. He was brought here because the Phillies suddenly needed outfield depth after Adolis García went down, because they needed another right-handed bat, because they needed someone who could handle all three outfield spots and not look overwhelmed when a game found him.
Wednesday night, the game found him.
Hill arrived as a useful piece. For one night, he became the whole story.
That is how baseball works over six months. It does not always hand the biggest moments to the biggest names. Sometimes it finds the player at the far end of the bench, the one stretching in the tunnel, the one waiting for a matchup, the one who knows his lane and stays ready for the one at-bat he might get.
The Phillies needed every inch of that readiness.
They trailed 2-0 early after Aaron Nola gave up solo homers to Luis García Jr. in the first and Jorbit Vivas in the second. Nola settled in from there and gave the Phillies five innings, allowing two runs on three hits. It was not dominant, but it kept the game from drifting away.
The Phillies pushed ahead in the fourth. Brandon Marsh singled to start the inning, Alec Bohm reached on an error, Bryson Stott doubled in a run, J.T. Realmuto added a sacrifice fly, and Gabriel Rincones Jr. lined an RBI single. It gave the Phillies a 3-2 lead and briefly restored order.
But there was nothing orderly about this series.
Curtis Mead, a former Phillies prospect, flipped the game again in the sixth with a pinch-hit, two-run homer off Jonathan Bowlan. The Nationals led 4-3. Their bullpen carried that lead into the ninth. The Phillies were three outs from turning Tuesday’s wild comeback into a pleasant memory attached to a missed opportunity.
Instead, Schwarber extended the inning. Hill rewrote it.
Marsh had three more hits, continuing a torrid series in which he has gone 7-for-13 with two homers, three RBIs and four runs. Seth Johnson handled a clean eighth and earned the win. Jhoan Duran struck out the side in the ninth for his 19th save, shutting the door with the kind of force that made Hill’s swing stand up.
That mattered, too.
A comeback is only romantic if someone finishes it.
Duran did. Hill made sure he had something to protect.
And suddenly, after weeks of uneven baseball, bullpen stress, lineup questions, injuries and roster patchwork, the Phillies had another one of those wins that does not fit neatly into a box score. Their record moved to 44-36. They had won four of five. They had taken two of the first three in Washington. More importantly, they had taken two straight games in a way that can jolt a dugout.
Nobody should confuse this with a finished product. The Phillies still have issues. They still have holes. They are still sorting through the outfield after García’s injury. They are still asking a lot from a bench that has been forced into larger roles than expected.
But on Wednesday, one of those bench pieces gave them the swing of the night.
Hill rounded the bases with his arms raised, the ball gone, the game flipped, the Phillies dugout alive. It was the kind of scene that can make a player feel like he belongs instantly, even if he has only been in the uniform for two weeks.
The Phillies have spent too much of this season trying to prove what they are not.
For the second straight night in Washington, they showed what they still might be.
A team that can look beaten.
A team that can get to its final strike.
And a team that, somehow, still might make you pay for assuming the ending has already been written.
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