Phillies hold off Diamondbacks to win eighth straight and climb to .500

The Phillies’ 7-5 win on Friday night was not as triumphant of some of their previous victories. They didn’t win it on a walk-off or score double-digit runs. But they scored just enough to protect their lead against a seventh-inning bullpen implosion, and, with that, took their eighth straight win. The Phillies are now 29-29 — exactly .500 on the season.

“I think there’s something to that,” interim manager Rob Thomson said of getting to .500. “We always talk about, once you get to .500, your goal is to get to five over. Once you get to five over, your goal is to get to 10 over. But now we’re at .500. We’ve been playing really good baseball. And now we’ve just got to move forward and take one game at a time.”

This eight-game winning streak is tied for the Phillies’ longest winning streak since 2011. They haven’t lost a game in June, and their schedule only gets easier from here. They face the Diamondbacks two more times this weekend and then have a three game series against the fourth-place Marlins, a four game series at the last-place Nationals, and a two-game set against the third-place Rangers. Their next series against a team currently above .500 will come starting June 23, when they face the Padres in San Diego.

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After digging themselves into a hole in April and May, it goes without saying that the Phillies need to take advantage of their easier schedule over these next few weeks. But Thomson doesn’t want his club to underestimate anyone — and the fact that only narrowly defeated the Diamondbacks on Friday reinforces that.

“You’ve got to be careful because these are major league teams,” Thomson said. “Anybody can beat anybody else on any given night. That’s been our message in our advance meetings. You’ve got to go out and play the same way you’d play against the Milwaukees of the world: high energy. I really like the energy level, the confidence, and the approach. You’ve just got to maintain that and stay consistent with it. It doesn’t matter who you’re playing.”

First baseman Rhys Hoskins set the tone for the Phillies early Friday night, hitting a solo home run off of Zac Gallen in just the Phillies’ second at-bat of the game. His teammates piled on the damage from there. With runners on first and second, Garrett Stubbs reached base on a fielder’s choice and fielding error by Ketel Marte that scored Alec Bohm. Kyle Schwarber drove the rest of the Phillies runners home with a three-run home run that traveled 391 feet to the right-center field seats, giving the Phillies at 5-0 lead.

It was an impressive showing against a pitcher in Gallen who had not given up an earned a run against the Phillies in his previous two starts against them. But the Phillies’ bats largely were quiet from there. They recorded three hits over their next four innings against the Diamondbacks’ relief corps until Hoskins hit another solo home run in the seventh inning. It was the 10th multi-home run game of his career. After Friday night, the Phillies have plus-36 run differential (284-248) through 58 games.

“I think obviously once we got into the ‘pen there, we would have wanted to score more early on, but it is what it is,” Schwarber said. “But Rhys did a really good job there and tacked on one more. And we grinded out their starter, and he’s a good pitcher, there’s no doubt about it.”

Kyle Gibson cruised through his first five innings of work, allowing just a single and a walk over that span, but began to falter in the sixth inning. He gave up a solo home run to Daulton Varsho and a walk and a single after that. He came back out for the seventh inning but wasn’t able to get out of it, allowing another single and another walk. Brad Hand, who came into the game after Gibson, wasn’t able to strand the runners, so Gibson was charged with four hits, three earned runs, three walks and one home run over six innings pitched with four strikeouts.

Thomson said after the game that he didn’t give much thought to holding Gibson back after the sixth inning.

“We felt like he had grinded through the sixth, he was still in the 90 pitch range, 92-93,” Thomson said. “He had handled that part of the order up until that point. And the first two guys to get on, we thought, ‘Well, we will bring in Brad and kill it.’ The killer really was the walk to [Jordan] Luplow. And then he hung a breaking ball to Varsho. But we felt like we were still in a pretty good spot.”

Entering Friday night’s game, left-handed reliever Brad Hand had a 1.13 ERA over 16 innings pitched. But, like Gibson, Hand was unable to exit the inning, allowing another walk and two doubles to score the runners Gibson had put on base. By the time he exited the game, only one-third of an inning later, his ERA had risen to 2.20.

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Luckily for the Phillies, Seranthony Domínguez remained as consistent as ever. He entered the game with a runner on second and one out, and promptly induced a flyout. He struck out Christian Walker to end the inning. Domínguez now has a 13 inning scoreless streak since May 8, the fourth-longest active streak in MLB.

Despite Hoskins’ insurance run, the Phillies’ lead entering the eighth inning was tenuous at best. But to the bullpen’s credit, they locked it down after that nightmare-ish seventh inning. Connor Brogdon came in for the eighth inning and allowed no runs and no hits. Closer Corey Knebel came in for the ninth and had a relatively uneventful outing, allowing one hit, no runs, and no walks, with one strikeout.