PHILADELPHIA − Sure, the Phillies and the Mets have a heated rivalry going. So few things please Phillies fans more than watching the Mets make a comedy of errors on pop-ups, or repeatedly strike out looking, or play mostly uninspired baseball.
But for the Phillies, NL East supremacy isn’t the issue anymore. Not after the Braves raced to a 10-game lead after taking both games against the Phillies earlier in the week.
The Phillies (39-36) cut the deficit to 9 games after their 5-1 win over the Mets on Friday coupled with Atlanta’s loss. The Mets sunk to 34-41, 14 games back of the Braves.
There are 87 games left in the season, plenty of time to make up that ground and win the division, and so on. That’s true for the Mets, too.
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But the division doesn’t matter. The Braves, in fact, are proof of that. They came charging back from 10.5 games behind last June to win the NL East title with 101 wins (they won a tiebreaker over the Mets, who also had 101 wins).
That meant little when the Phillies, who won 87 games and were the third and final wildcard team, eliminated the Braves in the NLDS. The Phillies made it to Game 6 of the World Series.
Why it’s even more important to trade for offense
The Phillies can do that again. They’re 14-4 since the Mets swept them in a three-game series from May 30-June 2. The Mets, meanwhile, are 4-14 since then.
Getting into the playoffs, no matter how, is what counts. And that’s why, less than six weeks until the Aug. 1 trade deadline, the Phillies should prioritize offense for a deep playoff run.
So go ahead and find a way to trade for Cardinals first baseman Paul Goldschmidt, or another slugger languishing on one of the few teams that is playing for next year.
That’s because the Phillies’ pitching has been dominant over the 14-4 stretch, with an ERA of 1.61. Taijuan Walker gave up a run on three hits in six innings Friday. He has allowed just two earned runs in his last 26 innings spanning four starts, an ERA of 0.69.
Ranger Suarez has allowed just three earned runs in 26 innings, for a 1.04 ERA. Aaron Nola pitched 6 shutout innings against the Braves on Thursday. And Zack Wheeler has been steady all year.
How Bryce Harper is letting his frustration show
The offense, meanwhile, has been up and down. The Phillies have just one home run in their last 50 innings. Bryce Harper, without a home run in 102 at-bats, was ejected in the seventh inning after striking out, upset all night with Mike Estabrook’s strike zone.
Phillies manager Rob Thomson said there were some “questionable calls,” but also acknowledged that Harper is frustrated with his lack of production. He has just 3 home runs this season in 43 games.
“I understand,” Thomson said. “He wants to perform and he wants to win. So I get it.”
But it’s team-wide too. Kyle Schwarber leads the Phillies with 20 home runs. No one else has more than 8.
So the Phillies have to rely on their pitching, along with some help from the other team, such as the Mets.
There was center fielder Brandon Nimmo dropping Schwarber’s pop fly into shallow center field to start the first inning. He eventually scored on Harper’s single. Bryson Stott’s sacrifice fly scored another.
It got even more comical in the sixth. The Phillies had runners on first and third with one out when Brandon Marsh hit a fly ball into shallow left. Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor and left fielder Tommy Pham both stopped and the ball fell in between them.
That gave the Phillies a 3-1 lead. Two batters later, Trea Turner singled in two runs to put the game away.
The Phillies got one extra base hit all night − a broken-bat dribbler down the left-field line by Marsh. Yet they won going away because Walker and the bullpen were dominant.
‘What’s the problem? What is it?’
That wasn’t the case early in the season, when the Phillies’ pitchers started slow. The Phillies were seven games under .500 and tied for last place in the NL East on June 2.
“That’s what we were asking ourselves the whole first 50 games, 60 games,” Turner said. “What’s the problem? What is it? What is it? We’re just playing better baseball (now), getting leads, holding them, playing good defense, winning the close games. Just doing a little bit of everything.”
So why stop now?
The Phillies are three games out of a wildcard spot entering Saturday’s games. The pitching can’t keep going like this. The Phillies need more offense, but someone like Goldschmidt won’t come cheaply. It would likely would mean giving up one of the Phillies’ top young pitchers in either Griff McGarry or Matt Abel.
A quick aside: The Phillies wouldn’t trade Andrew Painter, the 20-year-old phenom who’s rehabbing from an elbow injury. Thomson said Friday that Painter threw a 30-pitch bullpen session. But he’s still a long way from joining the rotation.
A possible problem trading for Paul Goldschmidt
There is one drawback, however, to getting Goldschmidt. He’s a first baseman, the position Harper is learning how to play after offseason elbow surgery. The Phillies’ plan is that Harper would start playing first base sometime after the All-Star break, thus enabling Schwarber, a left fielder, to become a designated hitter.
But if Goldschmidt is the first baseman, then Harper would have to remain the DH because he isn’t close to playing in the outfield.
Still, that’s a small price to pay. The Phillies will win many more games with Schwarber’s offense than they’ll lose with his defense − and that includes the Thursday loss to the Braves on Schwarber’s 10th-inning error.
As nice as it would be to see the Phillies starters keep that sub-2.00 ERA going for the rest of the season, it’s just not sustainable. And neither is counting on the Mets to gift-wrap a bunch of runs with their Little League-pop fly miscues.
The Phillies won’t go far unless the hitting improves.
“We all know that we can go deep into games and pitch well,” Walker said. “We just started slow. The energy is different right now.”
Contact Martin Frank at mfrank@delawareonline.com. Follow on Twitter @Mfranknfl.
