Phillies lose wild extra-inning game to Mets

With two outs in the eleventh inning on Thursday night, and the Phillies trailing the visiting Mets by one run, Kyle Schwarber unleashed on a 1-2 breaking ball from New York LHP Jake Diekman.

He missed. Strike three.

Schwarber slammed his bat to the ground in frustration. Brandon Marsh and Bryson Stott, watching from scoring position, jogged off the field. And a sizable Citizens Bank Park crowd, exhausted from an emotional roller coaster of a ballgame, hit the exits.

Thursday’s game was a wild one. The Mets struck first, scoring one run on a Pete Alonso homer in the first inning and another on a couple hits in the second. Phillies starting pitcher Taijuan Walker looked better in the third, but was forced to exit the game in the fourth after Starling Marte hit Walker in his left foot with a 99.7 mph batted ball.

X-rays on the foot were negative, but Walker is considered day-to-day. “It hit right off the end of his big toe,” said manager Rob Thomson after the game. “We’ll have to see how he looks tomorrow.”

The Phillies tied the game at two in the sixth inning after three consecutive singles and a sacrifice fly. An inning later, they took a 3-2 lead when Schwarber doubled to score Stott.

Matt Strahm, Orion Kerkering, and Gregory Soto held the Mets scoreless on one hit while the Phils mounted their counterattack. Strahm looked particularly nasty and, since allowing two runs in his first appearance of the season, has struck out 29 batters and walked just one over 17.2 scoreless innings.

“I trust [Strahm] as much as anybody,” said Thomson afterwards. “It’s as good as I’ve seen him, to tell you the truth . . . His fastball is really getting on people, his secondary pitches are good. He has no heartbeat. He lives for those moments.”

But in the eighth inning, the Mets punched back. Leading off the inning against Jeff Hoffman, Mets outfielder Tyrone Taylor reached base on a throwing error by Stott. After walking Alonso, Hoffman struck out the next two batters and looked like he would escape the inning unscathed. But the Mets’ Harrison Bader lined a ball right off of Hoffman’s back for a single that scored Taylor and tied the game.

Another run scored on a Hoffman wild pitch, and the Mets took a 4-3 lead.

If the Phillies were demoralized, they didn’t show it. Marsh worked a ten-pitch walk off Mets closer Edwin Diaz to lead off the bottom of the ninth, then advanced to second on a wild pitch. Stott drove Marsh home with a single to tie the game.

Stott stole second, and the Phillies almost walked it off on a 104.4 mph line drive by J.T. Realmuto. But New York second baseman Jeff McNeil was positioned perfectly and gloved the ball for the final out.

Jose Ruiz, who pitched a scoreless ninth inning for the Phils, returned in the tenth inning and prevented the Mets’ ghost runner from scoring.

“[Ruiz’s] curveball is just a great pitch, plus he’s 96-97,” said Thomson. “He did an unbelievable job.”

The game was setting up nicely for a Phillies victory, but they failed to score in the bottom of the tenth. With ghost runner Realmuto on second, the Mets intentionally walked Bryce Harper. Bohm, the next batter, grounded into a double play. Castellanos lined out to end the inning, and the game moved to the eleventh.

“[The Mets] did the right thing by walking Harper and playing for the double play,” Thomson said. “I’m not going to bunt there with our best RBI man [Bohm]. That’s the way it goes.”

Jose Alvarado pitched the eleventh inning for the Phils. Alvarado allowed the ghost runner to score on a single and a double to start the inning, then struck out the next two batters. Like Hoffman earlier in the game, Alvarado was one batter away from escaping his jam. And, like Hoffman, he threw a wild pitch with a runner on third. The Mets took a 6-4 lead, which proved to be enough for the win.

Asked about the wild pitch issue, which has plagued the Phils in other games as well, Thomson said there’s not much to be done: “When you got power stuff, you’re gonna have wild pitches. That’s just the bottom line . . . It’s gonna get away from you every once in a while, it’s hard to corral.”

All in all, a tough loss for the Phillies and their fans to stomach. Thursday’s game was one that could have easily gone either way.

My big takeaway is this: Teams with losing records aren’t going to just roll over for powerhouse squads like the Phillies, Braves, and Dodgers. Every single win has to be earned. Maybe a soft schedule helped propel the Phils to 31 wins in 45 games, one of their best records in franchise history. Sure. But the schedule does not diminish what these Phillies have accomplished early in the season.

And, despite the loss, the fight they showed in this one bodes well for the future.