Bryson Stott’s late two-run homer lifts Phillies past Reds for fifth straight victory
Pulling Andrew Painter after six innings on 69 pitches nearly backfired until Stott hit a home run 360 feet to right field in the eighth inning. The Phillies are 16-4 since Don Mattingly took over.
Bryson Stott was following the trajectory of the ball off his bat when a real-time statistic on the scoreboard in right field caught his eye.
Launch angle: 44 degrees.
As the fans in the bleachers in Major League II might have yelled, “Too high!” Hitting analysts will claim the optimal launch angle for a home run is 25-30 degrees. According to Statcast, Stott had never gone deep on a ball that left his bat at more than a 40-degree angle.
“I was hoping,” he said later, “for a double.”
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But everything seems to come up Phillies lately. So, when interim manager Don Mattingly lifts rookie starter Andrew Painter after only 69 pitches, and the bullpen coughs up a one-run lead, and Kyle Schwarber is sick and unavailable to hit, a high-flying 360-foot drive clears the right field fence for a two-run homer in the eighth inning of a 5-4 victory over the Reds.
Of course it does.
“It feels good, especially after the way we started,” Stott said. “We’ve been together for a long time now, and I think we just have that trust factor in each other that no matter the score, our pitchers are going to keep it within range and we’re going to have base runners and we need that big swing, and I feel like we’ve been getting it.”
The Phillies have won five in a row and 16 of 20 since Mattingly took charge. It’s mostly because their stars have starred. Cristopher Sánchez and Zack Wheeler are the 1-2 punch atop the rotation, Schwarber and Bryce Harper in the lineup.
But everything works better with peak Stott and Alec Bohm, who also homered against the Reds. The former first-round picks are the front men of a supporting cast that tends to back the superstars when the Phillies are going well and disappear when they aren’t.
How’s it going lately? Stott has 11 extra-base hits, including five homers, in his last 19 games, hiking his slugging percentage from .263 to .404. Bohm has a hit in nine consecutive games since getting benched by Mattingly.
In Stott’s case, maybe he’s finally seeing the fruits of an adjustment midway through last season in which he lowered his hands. Maybe it’s just a hot streak. This much is clear: After years of tinkering when times got tough, Stott is sticking to his process.
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“A younger me would have had a new swing by now,” Stott said. “I would’ve probably had a leg kick or something else. It gets frustrating, for sure, putting good swings on it, swinging at the right pitches, and just not going your way.
“But I think once you’ve kind of played baseball long enough, you understand and just keep taking good swings at good pitches, and hopefully you don’t hit it at someone.”
It’s all part of the learning curve in the majors. Painter is living it. The Phillies are trying to build the 23-year-old rookie’s confidence. Mattingly met with him last week, a day after pulling him after five solid innings in Boston.
Against the Reds, Painter gave up two runs on mostly soft contact in the second inning and set down 10 batters in a row to get through six innings for the first time in nine major league appearances.
If the Phillies hadn’t taken the lead on Bohm’s homer in the sixth, Mattingly said Painter might’ve gone back out for the seventh at only 69 pitches.
Instead, they went to a rested bullpen. Brad Keller gave up a tying homer to Sal Stewart in the seventh inning, and José Alvarado allowed Spencer Steer’s two-out RBI double in the eighth.
“My job is to just go out there and throw until they tell me not to anymore,” said Painter, who has a 5.77 ERA. “I trust every move that’s being made. I just want to help the team win, and whatever that is, that’s what I’m willing to do.”
But as the Phillies leave the training wheels on their rookie starter, Stott and Bohm are all grown up. Once a part of a young core known as the “Daycare,” they’re in their fifth and sixth full seasons, respectively.
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Bohm bottomed out two weeks ago, a .159 average and .433 OPS making him nearly unplayable. Mattingly took him out of the lineup for two days to clear his head.
Like everything else Mattingly has touched, it worked.
Since the benching, Bohm is 15-for-35 with three doubles and three homers. His solo shot in the sixth inning on a 1-and-0 changeup from Reds lefty Nick Lodolo opened a 3-2 lead before he singled to begin the rally in the eighth.
The secret?
“Honestly, wasn’t really thinking about [doing] damage,” Bohm said. “It was more just getting something that I could put a barrel on, really. I was just trying to stay through the gaps and then hit something high enough and end up going over the fence.”
Bohm’s resurgence has led to a return to the middle of the order. He batted cleanup last weekend in Pittsburgh and slid up to the No. 3 spot against the Reds in Schwarber’s absence.
“It was really good to see everybody step up when Kyle’s down,” Bohm said. “I think it just shows that we do have a long lineup, and the numbers you might see on the scoreboard don’t truly reflect the talent that we have in here.
“Any given day, anybody can get it done for us. That’s what’s cool about this thing.”
Ricky Bottalico spouts opinions each day on sports-talk radio and the Phillies' television pre- and postgame show. But before all that, he had a solid career as a relief pitcher, even representing the Phillies in the 1996 All-Star Game at Veterans Stadium. With the baseball world set to descend on Philly again in a few weeks, Ricky Bo joined "Phillies Extra" to re-live his All-Star experience. Watch here.
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