Despite back-to-back home runs, Phillies can’t complete sweep of Nationals

When manager Rob Thomson gives his player a day off, he typically gives them the whole day off. That means no pinch hitting, pinch running, or defensive substitutions. This was put to the test in the bottom of the ninth inning on Sunday afternoon. The Phillies trailed the Nationals, 6-4, and Edmundo Sosa had just hit a leadoff single.

Cal Stevenson was due up, and Thomson had Bryce Harper and J.T. Realmuto on the bench. But instead of calling on the two stars, he stuck with Stevenson, who grounded into a double play. Garrett Stubbs grounded out to end a 6-4 loss.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that Harper or Realmuto would’ve come through. But it was a frustrating way to lose a game, with a four-game sweep within reach.

“Absolutely [it’s a hard decision],” Thomson said, “But I’m thinking long term as well.”

He wanted to give Realmuto and Harper two full off-days (the Phillies have a scheduled off-day on Monday, before their six-game road trip to Atlanta and Kansas City).

“That’s what I’m thinking about,“ he said. “This is going to be a tough stretch, no doubt. And we’ve got to be able to handle it and have healthy bodies, rested bodies, so that we give ourselves every chance to play well.”

The Phillies shouldn’t have been in an 6-4 hole to begin with, but their pitching — and hitting — woes came back to bite them. Taijuan Walker wasn’t as efficient as he could’ve been. He threw 27 pitches in the first inning alone and needed 99 to get through his 4⅔ innings.

He allowed three walks and two home runs to a Nationals offense that ranks last in MLB in homers this year.

“Still not throwing enough strikes,” Walker said. “Three walks. Too many pitches, especially for five innings, it’s way too many. I like to go deep into games, six, seven innings. Just throwing way too many pitches right now.”

Walker now has a career-high 5.69 ERA through 12 starts this season. He has increased his splitter usage to 40% on Sunday and 36% on Aug. 13 — a meaningful figure, given how little he threw his signature pitch at the beginning of the season. Early on, he was reluctant to throw it because of how hard his splitter had been hit. Entering Sunday, hitters were batting .400 on the pitch.

But Walker spent his time on the injured list refining it, and said the splitter has felt better over his last two starts.

“Just the movement on it is so much better, and seeing the weak contact, the ground balls I’m getting, the swings and misses,” he said. “Even the home run I gave up on it, it was a good pitch. It was down and in. Nine times out of 10, that’s a ground ball to third base or the shortstop.

“So I like where it’s at. I think I threw 40 of them today, and that’s kind of where we want to be at with it. So just trusting it more in the zone.”

He added: “I want to throw it down, I want to throw it under the zone, but I just have to trust that the splitter is back and it’s good and I can throw it up in the zone and get weak contact with it.”

Despite the fact that Walker allowed a two-run home run in the fourth and a solo home run in the fifth, Thomson felt he attacked the zone more as his outing went on. Walker felt the same way. His velocity hit 92-93 mph a few times in the fifth, which the pitcher and manager saw as a promising sign.

Unfortunately for the Phillies, that didn’t translate into results. Walker was booed as he walked off the field. It was a disappointing outing, given that the Phillies (73-51) got some key contributions from unlikely places. For much of this year, Bryson Stott and Brandon Marsh have been stuck in extended slumps. Stott entered Sunday with a career-low .345 slugging percentage, and Marsh entered with a career-low .241 batting average and a strikeout rate of 39.1% for the month of August.

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But they’ve had better at-bats lately, and on Sunday, that work led to some needed run support. Stott hit a solo home run to right field in the bottom of the sixth, and Marsh followed that up with a solo shot of his own to right-center. It was Marsh’s first home run since July 29. The back-to-back shots tied the game, 4-4.

“That was good to see,” Thomson said. “Those guys putting the ball over the fence. Maybe they’re starting to get their rhythm, getting their swing down.”

Stott and Marsh aside, it was not the Phillies’ best offensive day. The lineup combined for 10 hits and went 1-for-4 with runners in scoring position. Nick Castellanos got them on the board early, with an RBI single in the first, and Trea Turner piled on with a solo home run in the third — his first of the month.

But the bullpen made that a moot point. After reliever Tanner Banks allowed a run in the sixth, reliever Matt Strahm loaded the bases in the eighth. He allowed a run on a sacrifice fly but struck out CJ Abrams to limit the damage.

That gave the Phillies two innings to score at least two runs, but they were unable to get the job done. They went down 1-2-3 in the eighth. Jeff Hoffman pitched the ninth. He got his first out thanks to a savvy defensive play by Alec Bohm, who was filling in for Harper at first base. Alex Call hit a pop fly in foul territory, and Bohm chased it down, but the ball bounced out of his glove. He caught it anyway and fell back into the netting along the first-base line.

But Hoffman then allowed a solo homer to James Wood to give the Nationals (56-69) a two-run lead. He induced another pop-out from Keibert Ruiz, allowed a single to Luis García Jr., and induced a flyout from Andrés Chaparro to end the inning.

Hoffman has a 9.45 ERA over the month of August (6⅔ innings). Strahm struggled more in July (6.00 ERA) but has settled down more this month.

“[It’s about] control with Strahmy, and command with Hoffy,” Thomson said. “And same thing with [José] Alvarado. He hasn’t struck many people out lately. Maybe it’s a little bit of fatigue but the command is off a little bit.”

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