PHILADELPHIA -- There were three Astros home runs Tuesday night. Andrew Painter allowed five runs. Daulton Varsho supplied what became the deciding run with a seventh-inning homer.
Those are the obvious places to look for an explanation of the Phillies’ 6-5 loss to Houston.
But the more revealing number might be 90.
As in 90 feet.
The Phillies spent the final four innings producing more than enough offense to erase a five-run deficit. They had eight hits from the sixth inning on. Six of their 10 hits for the entire game went for extra bases. They finished with five doubles and Trea Turner’s two-run homer. They didn’t draw a single walk and still managed 10 hits and five runs.
Yet when the night ended, the potential tying run was standing at third.
That’s what made this loss different.
Philadelphia went only 2-for-9 with runners in scoring position, but even that doesn’t fully explain what happened. The Phillies repeatedly created favorable situations and then surrendered pieces of those situations on the bases. They didn’t make an official error all night. They made several that will never appear in that column.
The seventh inning was the clearest example.
Alec Bohm opened with a double and Bryson Stott was hit by a pitch. Brandon Marsh then drove a ball off the wall in center.
Here came the first problem.
Bohm initially tagged rather than immediately reading the ball off the bat. That hesitation slowed the entire traffic pattern behind him. Bohm scored, but Stott had to stop at third and Marsh reached second.
The Phillies had cut the deficit to 6-4. They had runners at second and third with nobody out.
It should have been the beginning of the inning.
Instead, it was nearly the end.
J.T. Realmuto scorched a 102.9 mph line drive toward shortstop. Jeremy Peña made a terrific diving catch — a legitimate defensive gem on a ball hit only 153 feet because it never had a chance to climb.
Marsh, meanwhile, had taken off from second.
Peña threw behind him for the double play.
One pitch took the Phillies from second and third with nobody out to a runner at third with two outs. Derek Hill struck out, and an inning that began double, hit-by-pitch, double somehow produced exactly one run.
That might be the strangest statistic of the night.
Two doubles, a hit batter and nobody out. One run.
In a game Philadelphia lost by one.
The ninth offered another version of the same problem.
Stott singled off Josh Hader. Edmundo Sosa then drove a ball to the right-center-field wall, scoring Stott and making it 6-5.
But Sosa didn’t run the play cleanly. He watched the ball out of the box, then stumbled while advancing and wound up at second.
That mattered almost immediately.
Realmuto flew out. Then Hill hit a fly ball to right.
Had Sosa reached third on his drive, the Phillies at least would have had an opportunity to send him home on Hill’s fly ball. Instead, he remained at second.
Sosa eventually stole third during Kyle Schwarber’s at-bat.
By then there were two outs.
Same base. Completely different value.
Schwarber popped out and the game was over.
That sequence is what separates aggressive baserunning from intelligent baserunning. The objective isn’t simply to take extra bases. It is to understand when those bases have their greatest value.
Tuesday, Philadelphia repeatedly got the timing wrong.
And that obscured what was actually an impressive offensive recovery.
Painter put the Phillies in a 5-0 hole, allowing 10 hits and five runs over five innings. Christian Walker launched a three-run homer in the second and Cam Smith added another in the fourth. Varsho’s seventh-inning homer against Brooks Raley stretched Houston’s lead back to three after Philadelphia finally broke through.
But consider what the Phillies did after five innings.
They entered the sixth trailing 5-0.
Over their final four trips to the plate, they produced eight hits, six extra-base hits and five runs. All six of their extra-base hits came from the sixth inning forward. They put 10 runners aboard over those four innings when the two hit batters are included.
Five scored.
Five did not.
And in a one-run game, the distinction becomes enormous.
This wasn’t an offense that lacked opportunities. It created them. It wasn’t a lineup completely overmatched by Houston pitching. The Phillies reached Hader twice in the ninth alone and became the first club in weeks to push a run across against him.
They simply failed to extract the maximum value from what they created.
That matters in September.
There will be nights when a three-run homer decides a game. Nights when a starter simply doesn’t have it. Nights when a closer blows somebody away with 99 mph.
Tuesday was about something less dramatic and perhaps more frustrating.
Bohm waited when he needed to read.
Marsh ran when he needed to freeze.
Sosa lost precious ground before eventually stealing it back too late.
The box score says the Astros beat the Phillies by one run.
Watch the bases closely enough, and you can see exactly where Philadelphia left it.
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