Phillies bash five home runs to salvage a doubleheader split with Nationals, stretch wild-card lead to one game

WASHINGTON — At about 4:30 p.m. Saturday, in the 157th game of the season, with a playoff spot in sight, against the worst team in the league, a backup infielder walked to the mound to get the final out of the eighth inning for the Phillies.

Wild-card fever?

More like a fever dream.

But life moves pretty fast, especially in the last leg of a baseball playoff chase. So, a few minutes past 8 p.m., after the swooning Phillies absorbed a 13-4 thumping between downpours to open a doubleheader and fell back into a tie for the final National League wild card, Kyle Schwarber circled the bases for their fifth homer of an 8-2 rout of the Washington Nationals.

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And 2½ hours after that, as the Brewers coughed up a lead to the Miami Marlins in the ninth inning in Milwaukee, the Phillies’ clubhouse erupted. Schwarber howled. Rhys Hoskins exalted. Ranger Suárez shouted, “Go Fish!”

Who knows what Sunday will bring? Besides more rain.

“Baseball’s fun,” Schwarber said. “That’s why we always say we’ve got to enjoy this, right? A lot of people aren’t in this position that we’re in right now. A lot of people are making their offseason plans. We’re trying to make sure we’re not doing that.”

OK, so here’s where things stand: With four games to go, the Phillies have a one-game lead over the Brewers. They also own a tiebreaker by virtue of winning the season series. Any combination of three Phillies wins or Brewers losses will send the Phillies to the playoffs for the first time since 2011.

It just didn’t have to be this difficult. The Phillies had a 4½-game lead over the Brewers with 20 games left and a 96.3% chance of making the playoffs on Sept. 14, according to Fangraphs. Then they lost 11 of 16 games to turn it into almost a dead heat.

As aforementioned infielder Nick Maton took the mound Saturday, a teetering Jenga tower seemed less precarious than the Phillies’ playoff chances, which dropped from 73.3% when the day started to 57.7%, according to Fangraphs. By the end of the night, they rebounded to 79.8%.

“All year, I’ve said that they’re resilient and they come back and they fight,” interim manager Rob Thomson said. “And they do.”

Schwarber’s message in the 2½ hours between games: Relax.

“It was just more making sure that you go around talking to individuals and keeping it somewhat loose,” Schwarber said. “I think it was kind of obvious that we needed to play better.”

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It helped, too, that the Phillies faced Nationals rookie Tommy Romero in the nightcap. Making his fourth big-league appearance and second start, Romero set a Nationals record by allowing five homers. Schwarber set the tone by hitting the second pitch of the game into the second deck in right field.

Alec Bohm, Brandon Marsh, and Matt Vierling went deep in the third inning to build a 6-0 lead before Schwarber hit his league-leading 44th homer in the fourth, surpassing Chuck Klein in 1929 for the most homers in a season by a Phillies outfielder.

The Phillies also got a superb spot start from Noah Syndergaard, who shook off the rust from throwing only 28 pitches in the last 15 days and blanked the Nationals for 5⅔ innings.

Had the Phillies won the first game, they’d be in position to clinch the wild card Sunday. But these are the Phillies. Nothing comes easy. And the opener could have turned out to be one of the costlier losses of the season if the evening hadn’t gone so well.

Kyle Gibson gave up seven runs in six innings, including homers to Luke Voit and Joey Meneses. And the defense did him no favors. In particular, Bohm tried to backhand Meneses’ shot down the third-base line and whiffed, turning it into a three-run double in the second inning.

“Usually, he’s going to make that play,” Thomson said. “He just got a bad read off a changeup, hook ball. He just got a late break on it. He should’ve knocked it down if he could.”

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Given the stakes, it felt like the sort of mistake that happens to players who are pressing. The Phillies have made those mistakes in abundance over the last few weeks and years.

“They want to win games and get in. That’s not panic to me,” Thomson said. “I don’t sense panic. I sense a group that really wants to get in the playoffs.”

The Phillies sure have a funny way of showing it sometimes.

Although the Phillies and Nationals were able to squeeze in three games over the last two days in rain-soaked Washington, Sunday’s forecast is especially ominous.

But without an off day before the end of the regular season, MLB likely will make the teams sit and wait for an opening to play.

“No question,” Thomson said. “They’ll want to get this in.”

If the teams are unable to complete their series, they may have to reconvene in Washington on Thursday, one day after the end of the regular season and one day before Game 1 of the best-of-three wild-card round.

With one out in the first inning of the first game, Bryce Harper dared the Nationals into a mistake that led to a run.

Harper took off from first base to draw a throw from catcher Riley Adams. When Adams threw to second, Schwarber dashed home from third base and beat a throw back to the plate.

“I never thought I’d steal home,” Schwarber said.

It worked. But it was risky, and Thomson didn’t sound thrilled.

“I trust them,” Thomson said. “But we’ll talk about it.”

After allowing homers to four consecutive batters on July 2, Gibson had a 2.80 ERA and gave up a total of four homers in his next nine starts. In six starts since then, he had a 9.73 ERA and allowed seven homers.

In time, maybe Gibson will have answers for what went wrong. For now, he’s stumped.

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“I don’t think the pitching coaches [know] either,” said Gibson, who isn’t scheduled for another start and will be a free agent after the season. “It’s been a frustrating month for just about every one of my starts. I don’t know why. That’s been probably the most frustrating thing, sitting there and taking those deep dives and just coming up empty.”