PHILADELPHIA — For eight innings Sunday afternoon, the Phillies looked like a team whose winning streak had finally run out of oxygen.
Then they got two outs in the ninth.
Apparently, that was when the game started.
Kyle Schwarber launched a two-run homer 459 feet to straightaway center field, completing an almost absurd six-run, two-out rally and giving the Phillies a 6-4 walk-off victory over the Cardinals at Citizens Bank Park.
Nine straight wins.
Three straight series sweeps.
And a National League East race that suddenly looks considerably different than it did 11 days ago.
Schwarber’s blast was his 39th homer of the season and came on a 98 mph sinker from Cardinals closer Riley O’Brien. He had fallen behind 0-2 before working his way back into the at-bat and ultimately sending the ball beyond the center-field batter’s eye. It was Philadelphia’s first walk-off homer since June 9, 2023.
The hitter that day?
Schwarber.
Until Sunday, the Phillies had gone longer without a walk-off home run than any other team in baseball.
That drought ended in a ninth inning that made almost everything that happened during the previous eight irrelevant.
Philadelphia entered the inning trailing 4-0 with four hits.
Bryce Harper opened it with a double into the left-field corner. Luis Arraez popped out. Brandon Marsh flied out.
Two outs.
St. Louis needed one more.
It never got it.
J.T. Realmuto singled to center, moving Harper to third. Realmuto took second on defensive indifference, and Justin Crawford walked to load the bases.
That brought Edmundo Sosa to the plate with the Phillies down to their final strike.
Sosa lined a two-strike pitch just inside the third-base line and into the corner. Harper scored. Realmuto scored. Crawford scored.
Suddenly, 4-0 was 4-3.
Bryan De La Cruz followed and, also with two strikes, bounced a single past shortstop JJ Wetherholt to score Sosa.
Four-four.
Then came Schwarber.
One swing later, the Phillies were pouring onto the field.
All six Philadelphia runs came with two outs.
That might be the most revealing part of the whole thing.
The Phillies have spent much of this recent stretch talking about extending innings, creating traffic and refusing to depend entirely on the three-run homer. Sunday they spent eight innings doing almost none of it — and then demonstrated the concept in its most extreme form imaginable.
Cardinals starter Kyle Leahy had controlled the game early, limiting Philadelphia to two hits across four scoreless innings. Four St. Louis relievers followed with four more zeroes. Through eight, the Phillies had managed four hits and had gone 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position.
O’Brien faced eight batters in the ninth.
Five got hits. One walked. Six scored.
Cristopher Sánchez, meanwhile, endured one of his less dominant afternoons of the season. Alec Burleson singled home Wetherholt in the first and Jordan Walker in the fourth. José Fermín homered in the fifth, and Wetherholt added an RBI single in the seventh.
Sánchez allowed four runs on nine hits over 6⅔ innings, striking out seven without issuing a walk. Tim Mayza stranded two inherited runners in the seventh and worked through the eighth, while Alex McFarlane pitched a clean ninth and wound up with the win.
The Phillies also received encouraging news after Bryson Stott left with a right foot contusion after fouling a ball off himself. X-rays were negative, according to interim manager Don Mattingly.
But the larger picture is getting increasingly difficult to ignore.
Philadelphia is 73-58.
The Phillies were 9½ games behind Atlanta after losing 7-1 in St. Louis on Aug. 12. They have not lost since.
Nine games later, and before the Braves’ Sunday night game against Milwaukee in Williamsport, the deficit in the NL East is down to 2½ games. Atlanta entered the night 75-55 after losing seven of its previous nine.
The Phillies now head west for nine games beginning in Seattle.
They leave Philadelphia carrying something that looked highly improbable less than two weeks ago: a legitimate division race.
And they leave after a weekend in which Alec Bohm won Friday with a two-run triple in the 10th, Andrew Painter delivered perhaps his finest major-league start Saturday, and Schwarber finished Sunday by hitting a baseball 459 feet with the Phillies one out away from being shut out.
There are winning streaks built on dominance.
Others require a few things to go right.
This one has begun to feel like the Phillies believe the game isn’t over until somebody makes them leave the field.
On Sunday, the Cardinals never did.
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