PHILADELPHIA — The Phillies spent most of Sunday afternoon looking like a team ready to put away a difficult weekend.
Then they spent the rest of it trying not to give the game away.
Derek Hill finally ended the ordeal.
Hill lined a bases-loaded single through the left side in the bottom of the 12th inning, giving the Phillies a 7-6 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays at Citizens Bank Park and preventing a three-game sweep on the final day of Alumni Weekend.
It took considerably more work than the Phillies anticipated.
Jesús Luzardo struck out 12 over seven innings, Kyle Schwarber homered twice and Philadelphia carried a 5-2 advantage into the eighth. But another late bullpen failure erased the lead and forced a club already searching for stability into four additional innings.
The Phillies survived anyway.
That may have been the most important part.
With Philadelphia entering the afternoon holding only a one-game cushion in the National League Wild Card race, a third consecutive loss to Toronto would have turned an already frustrating weekend into something considerably uglier. Instead, the Phillies salvaged a game that contained both some of their most encouraging developments and some of their most familiar problems.
Schwarber supplied the first jolt.
He entered Sunday without a home run since July 18, a 17-game drought that matched his longest since joining the Phillies. That drought disappeared in the third when Schwarber drove a Shane Bieber changeup the opposite way for a three-run homer.
Toronto scored once in the fourth and again in the fifth, but Schwarber answered immediately, launching his second homer of the afternoon into the right-field seats for his 35th of the season.
Meanwhile, Luzardo controlled nearly everything else.
The left-hander allowed four hits and two runs while walking one, striking out 12 and repeatedly putting Toronto hitters away with his sweeper. Nine of his strikeouts came on the pitch. Over his last 10 starts, Luzardo owns a 2.04 ERA with 96 strikeouts in 70 2/3 innings.
He left after seven with Philadelphia ahead by three.
That should have been enough.
It wasn't.
Orion Kerkering surrendered three runs in the eighth as Toronto strung together four hits and tied the game, 5-5. It marked the second consecutive afternoon the Phillies bullpen coughed up a multi-run advantage in the eighth inning.
Jhoan Duran restored order with a scoreless ninth, but the Phillies couldn't finish the game in regulation — or in the first two extra innings.
They had opportunities.
In the 11th, Garrett Stubbs, pinch-running after Schwarber reached third, tried to score on a Brandon Marsh fly ball but was thrown out at the plate, extending a game that increasingly felt as if neither team wanted to leave Citizens Bank Park.
Toronto finally broke through in the 12th, taking a 6-5 lead against Caleb Kilian.
Philadelphia answered one last time.
Bryson Stott singled home the tying run. Toronto manager John Schneider then intentionally walked Alec Bohm with runners at the corners and one out, filling the bases and putting the game in Hill's hands.
Hill had already failed twice with runners in scoring position after entering as a pinch-hitter in the eighth.
This time, he delivered.
His liner skipped beyond diving shortstop Andrés Giménez, scoring Justin Crawford and setting off the Phillies' celebration near first base.
For one afternoon, the imperfections could wait.
The bullpen remains a concern. The Phillies again made a game considerably harder than it needed to be. And with the Wild Card race tightening, those late-inning problems aren't going away simply because Hill found grass in the 12th.
But they also received seven dominant innings from Luzardo, watched Schwarber's power return and responded after surrendering both a three-run lead and another run in extras.
Interim manager Don Mattingly called it “a little Utley Philly toughness” afterward.
On Alumni Weekend, that description seemed appropriate.
The Phillies didn't make Sunday pretty.
They made sure it counted.
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