Phillies end a six-game losing streak and Brandon Marsh thanks the baseball gods for his fortuitous catch

SEATTLE — In the end, maybe it will have been a blind catch of a fly ball lost in the sun on a Sunday in early August on the other side of the country that pulled the Phillies out of their worst nosedive in six years.

And if that’s the case, Brandon Marsh will gladly take it.

People who are less superstitious than Marsh might choose to see it that way. For weeks, the Phillies neither played well nor caught a break. But here they were, leading by one run in the seventh inning behind dominant Zack Wheeler, when a fly ball was hit to the warning track in right-center field.

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“When it climaxed and apexed at the top, it got in the dead middle of the sun,” Marsh said. “My vision literally started fading. I mean, you stare at the sun for five seconds, you start losing vision.”

So, what’s a center fielder to do?

“I was going to let it hit my face,” Marsh said.

It didn’t come to that. Marsh “palms-upped it,” extending his arms (and saying a prayer), and the ball fell out of the sky and dropped into his glove. One inning later, the Phillies busted out for four runs on three homers, including a two-run shot by slumping Bryce Harper, and won a 6-0 laugher over the Mariners.

Maybe the Phillies’ luck is turning. If they believe in luck.

“I might now,” Marsh said.

Harper, who hiked his socks in his latest bid to change his luck amid a 2-for-38 slump, wasn’t about to tempt fate by reading too much into the Phillies’ overdue good fortune.

“I’m not going to say that,” he said, laughing.

At a minimum, though, the Phillies were finally able to breathe again. After going 4-13 in their worst 17-game skid since September 2018, still stewing over a 10-inning gut punch from the previous night, they got an eight-inning, two-hit gem from Wheeler and three hits from Harper.

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Order was restored, at least temporarily, in the Phillies’ universe.

The superstars showed up, as Harper would say. At last.

“You know how I am, man. I want to be the best I can for this team, this organization,” Harper said. “I know when I play better, our team’s better. Obviously it’s not going well for a lot of us right now. But the quicker we can turn that page, knowing we’re still the best team in baseball, knowing we’ve got a great record, knowing that we’ve got all the guys in here that we need. That was a big win today.”

The Phillies had the right pitcher on the mound for it.

Wheeler spent a leisurely morning reclining on a sofa in the clubhouse and watching the Olympics. When he got bored, he roamed around and played a prank as old as time, walking up behind people, tapping their shoulder, and hoping they would look the other way.

Chill? Wheeler was cooler than the refreshing breeze off Puget Sound.

But when he finally went to the mound, Wheeler was overpowering. He wasn’t able to elevate his fastball as much as usual. But he rode his sinking two-seamer down in the strike zone to vanquish the Mariners.

“I’ve always taken pride in that,” Wheeler said of being the stopper. “I knew today we needed a win, so I just had that mindset coming in. And I was able to do it.”

Said manager Rob Thomson: “That’s why he’s the ace, you know? I always feel good when he’s going out there.”

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Before games, Thomson likes to ask pitching coach Caleb Cotham for a prediction on the starting pitcher’s line. Cotham guessed Wheeler would go eight innings and bounce back after allowing seven runs against the Yankees last week.

Nailed it.

Kyle Schwarber smashed a leadoff homer off the windows of a restaurant above right field off Mariners ace Logan Gilbert. And Wheeler made the early lead hold up by allowing two-out singles in the first and third innings, a leadoff walk in the fourth, and nothing else to lower his ERA to 2.77, second-best in the National League.

But it all could’ve unraveled in the seventh inning if Jorge Polanco’s fly ball doesn’t land in Marsh’s mitt.

“For sure,” Marsh said. “1-0 game, no outs, bottom of the seventh. If I don’t catch that ball, that’s a double, triple depending on how it kicks. It’s a completely different game.

“I had my arms out, and the baseball gods put the baseball right in my glove. Better lucky than good in that moment, for sure.”

Said Harper: “Never seen anything like that.”

Maybe there really was something cosmic about the whole thing. Because Bryson Stott homered to lead off the eighth inning before Harper, and Alec Bohm went back-to-back. In the dugout, the feeling was, well, let Wheeler explain it.

“It felt normal,” he said.

And for the Phillies, normal is good.

“You want to feel like a good team, right?” Wheeler said. “We’re a good team. We’ve been losing a lot. Things haven’t been going our way. But when they do, you’re kind of like, ‘All right, here we go again. We’re back to normal, and hopefully we start going back up.’”

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Maybe another glimpse of the Dodgers this week will snap the Phillies out of their funk in earnest. They’ve lost six consecutive series since sweeping the Dodgers in Philadelphia last month.

In the meantime, they pocketed an elusive victory, extended their division lead to six games, and headed to Los Angeles, but not before a mechanical issue with the team plane delayed their flight.

There are limits to what the baseball gods can control.

“Luck hasn’t been falling our way,” Marsh said. “Hopefully that’s the turning point.”