Alec Bohm leads a late offensive surge to power Phillies past the Braves: ‘Kept piling on the hits’

ATLANTA — Luis Arraez went after a first-pitch slider, and popped it straight up.

Braves third baseman Austin Riley settled underneath it, making the catch for the second out of the eighth inning for another potential wasted opportunity for the Phillies. They were on the verge of stranding another pair of runners in scoring position against Atlanta on Sunday.

The Phillies had already squandered leadoff doubles from J.T. Realmuto in the fifth and Bryce Harper in the sixth. Now it looked like Kyle Schwarber’s single and Harper’s second double of the day were also going to be for naught.

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But Alec Bohm changed the Phillies’ fortunes, and the tide of the game, with one swing. He smacked a fastball left over the middle of the plate to the center-field wall for a bases-clearing double and put the Phillies back in front.

From there, the floodgates opened, and the offense strung together six two-out hits and a walk in a 9-4 victory over the Braves.

“If we keep finding ourselves in spots like that, we’re all going to trust ourselves that we’re going to get that job done,” Schwarber said. “Guys just kept piling on the hits, piling on the good at-bats, and that’s what we’re going to rely on.”

The eighth-inning outburst was a catharsis for a Phillies offense stuck in neutral for the first two losses of the series. They sent 12 men to the plate, while the Braves used three relief arms. Before Bailey Falter finally ended it by striking out Harper, Schwarber had already hit his second single of the frame.

“Had some chances early and weren’t able to tack on, but finally to get to break through and put some runs up was huge, obviously, for us,” said interim manager Don Mattingly.

Realmuto had a three-hit day, giving the Phillies an early 2-1 lead with a two-run homer off Braves starter Grant Holmes in the second inning. He knocked an elevated fastball into the left-field seats, and later put a good swing on a changeup below the zone for a double.

“J.T.’s homer really was big,” Mattingly said. “Them getting on the board early, and then us being able to get the lead, and the game stayed there for a while. J.T. had a big day today.”

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Realmuto’s homer helped out his batterymate Andrew Painter, who had surrendered another first-inning run. The right-hander has a 9.00 ERA in the first inning this season. This time, it came on a pair of singles and a sacrifice fly.

That proved to be the only run he allowed over five innings and 87 pitches, although many of those pitches were in high-pressure situations. Painter allowed a lot of traffic, scattering six hits and issuing four walks, but he managed to grind through it and get outs when needed.

“Walk away with the win there, and try to build on it,” Painter said. “See what went wrong, what we want to work on. But I mean, the four walks just can’t happen.”

Painter was yanking his fastball, and consistently missing with his changeup arm-side. He said he thought the issue might be mechanical, possibly from tilting his shoulders too much, but will dig in further with the Phillies staff before his next start.

While he did not have his best stuff or command overall, the Phillies could take positives from how Painter battled.

“It kind of shows his character, from the standpoint of just keep turning the page, keep going, keep fighting,” Mattingly said. “Today was a perfect example of that.”

Arraez made a few diving stops at second base, once to help out Painter in a big spot in the fourth inning and again to propel Alex McFarlane to a clean sixth. Mattingly said he was especially impressed with McFarlane’s battle with Mike Yastrzemski. The Braves outfielder went up 3-0 against him at first, but McFarlane fought back to a full count.

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Yastrzemski then fouled off three more pitches, before McFarlane froze him on a slider for the strikeout. Since surrendering a game-tying home run to Ronald Acuña Jr. last week, the rookie right-hander has had three scoreless appearances.

“After a long at-bat, be able to do that and not have to just pump heaters,” Mattingly said, “that’s a good sign.”

The Phillies’ bullpen faltered yet again in the seventh when José Alvarado coughed up the one-run lead. A bloop single from Michael Harris II to lead off the inning turned into the tying run after a wild pitch and another single.

But after the Phillies pulled back ahead by a comfortable margin following the big eighth, they were able to leave the rest of their high-leverage arms on the shelf.

Tanner Banks pitched the final two innings for his first major league action since July 8. In the ninth, he gave up an infield single followed by a homer from Matt Olson, as the Braves started to put together a rally of their own.

But a foul pop ended it, and the Phillies managed to salvage the final game of the series.

“You want to win series, and you want to feel like you’re doing what you need to do to keep putting yourself in the position to get in October,” Schwarber said. “But I think that there are things that we can look at, positive and negative, right? Learn from those, take it forward into these next series, and keep pushing.”

They missed an opportunity this weekend to keep up in the divisional race. But with the help of the Cubs’ loss to the Pirates on Sunday, the Phillies head into Sunday’s off day once again tied with Chicago in the wild-card race with 12 games remaining. The Cubs hold the tiebreaker, however.

“It’s just day to day,” Mattingly said. “At this point, you got to try to win a game every day and just keep fighting. Get yourself to the finish line.”

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The Phillies and Braves are set to square off again this weekend in Atlanta, so it's the perfect time to check in with Jeff Francoeur, who played for both teams and calls Braves games on TV and radio. Francoeur joined Phillies Extra to help break down the race for NL East supremacy. Watch here.

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