Jean Segura, Bryson Stott and Nick Maton heroics lift Phillies to walk-off win over Reds, 7-6

About 20 seconds before the bottom of the ninth inning on Tuesday night, Bryson Stott and Nick Maton were taking swings in the indoor batting cages, trying to stay ready to pinch hit.

“Hurry up,” Stott told Maton. “I’m up first.”

Maton obliged. He ran to the bathroom as Stott stepped up to the plate after Jean Segura’s leadoff walk. By the time he came back, it was his turn to bat. Stott was standing on third base, and the Phillies had tied the game with one out. On a 2-2 pitch, Maton lined a high four-seam fastball to right field for his first career walk-off hit in the Phillies’ 7-6 victory.

Initially, the Phillies seemed to be headed for a deflating loss — at the hands of a defensive lapse that led to the Reds scoring the tying and go-ahead runs in the top of the ninth. But if this team has shown anything, it’s shown that it will fight. In the bottom half of the inning, Segura on first base and no outs, Stott launched a slider 381 feet to center field that hit high off the wall for a double. A throwing error by center fielder Nick Senzel enabled Segura to score and Stott to reach third base. Matt Vierling, who had homered in the seventh inning, struck out before Maton stepped up.

It was the Phillies’ fifth walk-off and their 30th comeback win of the year.

“We all believe in each other,” Stott said. “If you don’t do it, you know you’ve got another guy behind you who is very capable of doing it as well. You never try to do too much. You just pass the baton.”

The Phillies starters haven’t been going as deep of late, and with Seranthony Domínguez on the injured list, the bullpen has looked especially thin. Interim manager Rob Thomson wasn’t able to turn to trusted veteran David Robertson to hold their 5-4 lead over the Reds in the ninth inning, so he turned to Brad Hand.

Things did not go smoothly. A throwing error by shortstop Edmundo Sosa allowed Senzel to get on base, and from there, Hand allowed a single and a two-run triple to give the Reds a 6-5 lead.

It was the Phillies’ third blown save in the past three games, counting two in Sunday’s 10-9 loss to the New York Mets.

Initially, it seemed like the Phillies were going to be on the wrong side of history. Nick Lodolo had them hitless through five innings, after he’d held them scoreless through seven innings in a 1-0 Reds win in Cincinnati last week. But in the sixth inning, after the Reds had broken a scoreless tie with three runs off Ranger Suárez, the Phillies’ offense came alive.

Edmundo Sosa, the Phillies’ nine-hole hitter who started at shortstop, got them their first hit of the day — a double to center field. Rhys Hoskins walked, Alec Bohm singled to drive in Sosa, and J.T. Realmuto tripled to drive in Hoskins and Bohm. Castellanos singled to drive in Realmuto to give the Phils a 4-3 lead. By the end of the sixth inning, a lifeless lineup had come to life.

Ironically, it was Vierling who hit the Phillies’ only home run of the game. Vierling had been batting .158 over his past seven games, and .140 over his last 15. He botched a catch at the center field wall in the sixth inning that loaded the bases before Suárez walked in two runs. Given all of that, Vierling was an unlikely choice to flash some power on Tuesday night, but he launched Reds’ reliever Ian Gibaut’s cutter 416 feet into the left-center field seats.

Another unlikely hero was left-handed reliever Michael Plassmeyer, who, oddly enough, played high school ball against — and travel ball with — Vierling in St. Louis. Plassmeyer was traded by the Giants to the Phillies on June 8 for catcher Austin Wynns, and was called up on Monday in case a Phillies starter wasn’t able to go deep into a game. To say he was caught off guard by the news of his promotion would be an understatement. The 25-year-old left-hander was told he was going to the big leagues when he was on the road with Lehigh Valley, at a bus stop on their way home from Buffalo.

When Suárez ran into some command issues in the sixth inning, Plassmeyer found himself pitching on a big league mound for the first time in his life, but he looked steady as can be. After Suárez gave the Reds a 3-0 lead, and loaded the bases with two outs, Plassmeyer struck out Austin Romine to end the inning. From there, he induced two flyouts and a groundout for a 1-2-3 seventh inning. He didn’t light up the radar gun, but his command was outstanding — which, after Suárez’s outing, was what the Phillies needed. Plassmeyer threw only nine pitches, and eight were strikes.

“I was just trying to stay true to who I am, as a pitcher,” Plassmeyer said. “I knew I was going to sped up a little bit out there. I’m not used to being out of the bullpen, and the debut and everything. So I just tried to focus on breathing and calm it down a little bit.”

The acquisition of Plassmeyer went under the radar. He was not a highly touted prospect — a fourth round draft pick out of the University of Missouri — but had found success recently in triple-A Lehigh Valley. His ERA dropped from 7.38 over 10 games started with the Giants’ triple-A Sacramento affiliate to 2.83 over 11 games started with the IronPigs.

The Reds scored a run off José Alvarado in the top of the eighth, but he struck out the side with runners on second and third. Without Vierling’s home run, it would have been a tie ballgame entering the seventh. And without Plassmeyer’s shutdown performance in the seventh, the Reds could have blown the game wide-open. Sometimes help comes from the most unlikely of places. On Tuesday night, it came from two former travel teammates in St. Louis.

Suárez’s first five innings looked a lot like Lodolo’s. He allowed only three hits, and no runs, with one walk. But then, in the sixth inning, something changed. He allowed a double, a walk, and a single to load the bases, and another single and two more walks from there. He was unable to finish the inning.

It was an unusually shaky outing from Suárez, who entered Tuesday’s game with a 1.02 ERA over his last six starts — the second lowest ERA in baseball over that span. That it was the Reds, a team with the seventh worst OPS in baseball (.686), that increased his ERA to 1.54 is somewhat baffling.

With his RBI single to left field in the bottom of the sixth, Nick Castellanos extended his hitting streak to 13 games (dating back to Aug. 11). Castellanos’ streak is the longest active hitting streak in the National League and the third-longest of his career.

» READ MORE: Bryce Harper homers twice in rehab assignment debut

Bryce Harper hit two home runs in his first rehab game on Tuesday night in Lehigh Valley, but indicated to reporters after the game that he would like to stay most of the week at triple-A. Nevertheless, Thomson, wouldn’t rule out the possibility that Harper rejoin the club this weekend.

“It’s probably not [impossible],” Thomson said. “It depends on how he feels, I guess.”