The Phillies overcame rain, ruts, and a bullpen that seemingly never fails to make things interesting – always in the most stressful way possible – to take two of three from the Cardinals out in St. Louis.
Aaron Nola gave them six solid innings in the series finale's 4-3 win, Brandon Marsh and Alec Bohm continue to be Cardinal killers, and Nick Castellanos and Johan Rojas both briefly snapped out of their slumps at the plate to bring the Phillies back to .500 at 6-6 on the season coming back to Citizens Bank Park for a seven-game homestand.
Up next are the Pittsburgh Pirates for a four-game set beginning Thursday night.
Until then, here are a quick six thoughts from the series win over the Cards...
• Here we were wondering if it was time to send Rojas down, and then he goes off for a 3-for-4 night at the plate in Monday's 5-3 win after 10.
That game alone shot his batting average up nearly 100 points, from .045 the day before up to .154 – gotta love that early season whiplash in the stats.
In the field, Rojas is excellent and that's heavily why he remained up with the big league club when they broke from spring training. It's his bat that was always the concern going back to the postseason, and up until Monday, he just looked lost at the plate.
He could still very well need some Triple-A at-bats over in Lehigh Valley to figure things out, but his performance on Monday might have at least bought him a bit more time before that call has to be made.
That double play he grounded into in Tuesday night's 3-0 loss was a killer though.
Rojas went 1-for-4 in Wednesday's finale.
• Over to another bat that's been struggling – mightily – Castellanos notched two base hits Tuesday night and then an RBI knock in the sixth on Wednesday to put the Phillies up 4-2.
He went 0-for-5 on Monday and 1-for-4 on the whole in Wednesday's game, and all still with mounting evidence that there is a very clear book on the free-swinging outfielder now.
Castellanos was batting .154 with a dismal .421 OPS, 11 strikeouts, and no homers through 11 games and 39 at-bats entering Wednesday.
He's been chasing, which got figured out with the NLCS back in October and has been exploited ever since the first pitch of Opening Day. Pitchers are all betting on the breaking ball low and away, and he kept biting at a 35.7 percent rate, per Baseball Savant as of Tuesday.
But what was of greater concern: Castellanos just wasn't making good contact, like at all.
He had whiffed on 36.8 percent of his pitches after Tuesday night – 47.5 percent on breaking pitches alone – and had yet to get the barrel on the ball a single time, again per Baseball Savant.
Cardinals starter Lance Lynn worked Castellanos into a 1-2 count in the fourth inning on Wednesday and went for the breaking ball low and away to try and punch him out. On cue, Castellanos bit, again, to go down swinging.
That run knocked in later on – on a first-pitch fastball – was a second to breathe, and he should take it, but opposing pitchers aren't going to stop doing that anytime soon. Reliever Zack Thompson definitely didn't in the eighth, when he sent Castellanos down swinging again on three pitches, with the 0-2 delivery being a slider down low.
It's been a bad rut, for sure, but making it all feel worse has been that Castellanos just can't seem to adapt to any of it.
• Rain fell heavy throughout Wednesday's series finale, but the Phillies and Cardinals kept playing through. As our own Evan Macy pointed out, because of MLB's adjustments to the schedule formatting, they've left clubs with absolutely no room for make-up dates going forward.
This will be the only time the Phillies come through St. Louis this season, and the Cardinals will pay their only visit to South Philly at the end of May.
The rain got bad enough early on that the grounds crew's solution to keep the rosin bags dry for the pitchers was to throw them inside Ziploc bags.
• And the rain might've lessened Nola's command a bit, too. This full-count changeup to Iván Herrera in the second hung and got launched over the left-field bullpen for a solo shot, when the fastball the pitch before went sailing way above the zone.
But Nola managed a pretty controlled outing otherwise, holding the Cardinals to only those two homers through 6.0 innings, with three strikeouts, three walks, and only three hits allowed.
He threw 93 pitches in total and gave the Phillies a chance. The bats just didn't have an answer for Lynn on the other side, who outside of two first-inning runs allowed – which were more tied to a dropped fly ball out in center field than anything – held the Phillies scoreless for four frames after, walking four but striking out six with only a single hit allowed in five innings total.
• But when the Cardinals reached into their bullpen for the sixth, the Phillies were finally able to strike.
J.T. Realmuto reached first on a grounder into right, Bohm drew a walk, and then Marsh split a ball down the left-field line to drive in the go-ahead run. Castellanos followed up with his single right after for insurance.
Marsh also homered in Monday night's extra-innings win and has become a Cardinals killer so far in his career, batting .476 with a staggering 1.310 OPS against St. Louis through seven games entering Wednesday.
Bohm has tagged them around as well, batting .301 with an .855 OPS and four homers through 21 career games against the Cardinals, which included the game-winning double in the 10th from Monday night.
• Circling back to Realmuto, the catcher had to leave Tuesday night's loss after taking a pitch that bounced hard off the dirt straight to the throat. He was hurting after that, and didn't look right, manager Rob Thomson said afterward, so they pulled him and had him checked out in the morning.
Immediately though, he was clear of a concussion, Thomson continued, and didn't look to have any broken bones. "Neck contusion," Thomson said. "We'll check him tomorrow."
Realmuto re-entered the lineup for first pitch on Wednesday and looked just fine, going 2-for-5 with two runs scored while getting right back behind the plate to call the pitches.
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