Edmundo Sosa and Jake Cave deliver in Phillies’ 6-4 win over AL-leading Orioles

Edmundo Sosa ran a lap around the bases, pumped his arms, blew a kiss to the crowd, and bounced into the Phillies’ dugout after hitting the first go-ahead home run of his career.

And there at the bat rack, Trea Turner smiled and opened his arms for an embrace.

Score one for the understudies. It wasn’t only Sosa, who filled in at shortstop for the slumping Turner. Jake Cave played left field against a tough Orioles righty, got two hits, including an RBI double, and crashed into the wall for a run-saving catch.

Oh, and the Phillies won, 6-4, before 40,235 paying customers at Citizens Bank Park, and took the series from the team with the best record in the American League.

» READ MORE: Will Trea Turner continue to bat second Friday when he returns to the Phillies’ lineup?

“We’re playing around a bunch of superstars out here,” Cave said. “Anything we can do to contribute to help these guys, we’re doing our job. Because any given day, you’re going to have Turner, [Kyle Schwarber], [Bryce] Harper all going deep and having these huge games. If we can contribute something as well, that’s a good sign of a good club.”

Indeed, if the Phillies return to the postseason, it will be the stars that get them there. But with the trade deadline looming Tuesday and president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski on the lookout for help, this was a reminder of the value of role players.

The Phillies acquired Sosa last July in a deadline trade with the Cardinals. Cave came as a December waiver pickup, appropriately from the Orioles, who claimed him two months earlier only to designate him for assignment before he put on their uniform.

Cave bats from the left side of the plate. The Phillies are looking for a righty-hitting left fielder before the deadline in what’s shaping up to be a seller’s market.

Could they be compelled to stand pat with Cave and rookie center fielder Johan Rojas?

Check back in a few days. Meantime, after Cave tore up triple A and went 2-for-11 since getting recalled last week, manager Rob Thomson liked him against Orioles starter Kyle Bradish. Cave made the most of the chance, lining an RBI double and scoring on Nick Castellanos’ RBI single to turn a 3-0 deficit into a one-run game.

But Cave’s biggest impact on the game came in the sixth. With the Phillies leading, 4-3, and the tying run on second base, Ramón Urías hit a drive to left field. Cave went face-first into the wall, held the ball, and yelled as he ran off the field with center fielder Brandon Marsh.

“It was an incredible play,” Sosa said through a team interpreter. “I honestly couldn’t even believe it.”

Said Cave: “Timed it up pretty good, held on to it. Felt awesome. That’s kind of all I got.”

But what about this: After hitting the ground, Cave appeared to yell up to the bleachers. Some words for a few of the many Orioles fans in attendance?

» READ MORE: Phillies trade deadline: The cost of pitching insurance, defense vs. power, and other questions

“I saw the video, and it looks like I was talking some trash. I wasn’t,” Cave said, laughing. “They were hyping me up, and I was letting ‘em know that I was right there with them. I loved it. In the Phillies’ stadium, the rubber match against the Orioles, there’s not much that compares to that, unless you’re doing it in the playoffs.”

And then there was Sosa. Thomson was committed to giving a full day off to Turner, who started all but one of the first 101 games. Batting with the game tied in the seventh inning, Sosa hit a long foul ball to fall into a two-strike count before clocking Bradish’s fastball.

Sosa even took a beat to admire it.

“All I saw was the ball going up in the air real high, so I stood there for a second,” Sosa said. “And then I started running and I noticed it was a homer.”

For as much as the unexpected sources at the bottom of the order came through with timely hits, the most encouraging swing came from J.T. Realmuto.

Stuck in an 8-for-43, 18-strikeout funk, Realmuto banged a sinker off the wall in left field for a two-run double in the fourth inning to give the Phillies a 4-3 lead. Entering the game, he was batting .245/.304/.455 with 12 homers.

» READ MORE: Could the solution to the Phillies’ need for a righty-hitting left fielder come from the ... Mets?

Realmuto carried the Phillies’ offense for much of the second half last season while Harper was sidelined by a broken thumb. He batted .307/.367/.583 with 14 homers after the All-Star break, shoving his way into down-ballot votes for the National League MVP award.

For all the attention paid to Turner and Schwarber, the .183-hitting leadoff man, it can’t be overstated how much the Phillies need Realmuto to get hot again in the season’s final two months.

It wasn’t intentional that the Phillies optimized for defense in the eighth inning by bringing in Rojas to play center field.

Nick Castellanos’ calf tightened after getting hit by a pitch.

Thomson said he expects Castellanos will be able to play Friday when the Phillies open a three-game series in Pittsburgh.

» READ MORE: Why keeping Johan Rojas in the lineup could help crystalize the Phillies’ trade deadline needs

Ranger Suárez was one pitch from getting out of the third inning. But that pitch turned his start from solid to so-so.

With two out and two strikes, Adley Rutschman turned on a belt-high sinker and launched it into the left-field bleachers for a 3-0 Orioles lead. Suárez has allowed five homers in five starts in July after giving up only one in five starts in June.

Suárez mostly muted the Orioles after that and pitched into the seventh inning. But after the Phillies rallied for a 4-3 lead, he gave up a leadoff double to James McCann, who scored the tying run on Austin Hays’ two-out single against Seranthony Domínguez.