Phillies fall into tie for second NL wild card, as bats go quiet in series loss to Diamondbacks

PHOENIX — After the second game of this series, a loss in which the Phillies somehow scored four runs despite going 2-for-17 with runners in scoring position, Rhys Hoskins put the blame on himself because, well, that's what team leaders do.

"I need to be better," Hoskins said Tuesday night. "If I'm better, we win that game."

Oh, if only it were that simple.

Hoskins is far from the only Phillies slugger in a slump. Bryce Harper hasn’t hit enough lately either. And when neither Hoskins nor Harper are hitting, it doesn’t much matter what else is happening. The Phillies are in a bad way.

It’s difficult to imagine things getting worse than Wednesday night. The Phillies mustered only five hits in a listless 6-1 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks here at Chase Field that further tightened the bottleneck wild-card standings in the National League.

“Are we still in the second wild card?” Harper said. “I’ll take it.”

Well, actually, the Phillies fell into a tie with the Milwaukee Brewers for the second wild-card spot. And it’s not only that. The St. Louis Cardinals and surging New York Mets are both a half-game back, while the Diamondbacks are more than hanging in, 1 1/2 games off the pace.

That’s five teams separated by 1 1/2 games in pursuit of one playoff spot with 48 games left.

Crazy.

Gabe Kapler describes himself as a "scoreboard-watcher," though the Phillies manager insists he isn't obsessed with the standings, especially in the second week of August. Besides, his players appear to be pressing enough without worrying about how four other teams are doing.

“One thing that I’ll say is every team in our division, sans the [first-place Atlanta] Braves for any extended period of time, has gone through stretches where things weren’t clicking on all cylinders,” Kapler said. “When our club is playing our best baseball, we’re going to be unbeatable.”

But it’s 114 games into the season and the Phillies have not yet played their best. They haven’t won more than four games in a row. Since early June, they have won one series against a team with a winning record at the time of the series.

After pounding the Diamondbacks in the series opener Monday night, they fell flat in the final two games. They were two outs from getting shut out in the finale when Harper lined a solo homer into the bleachers in left-center field in the ninth inning. Otherwise, the Phillies were shut down almost completely.

For five innings, they were muted by rookie right-hander Zac Gallen, a Bishop Eustace Prep graduate who was making his Diamondbacks debut after being acquired in a trade last week. Gallen held the Phillies to one hit and three walks.

“He went out there and mixed [his pitches] well,” Harper said. “First time we’ve faced him. Definitely thought he threw the ball well today.”

Whereas the Phillies simply weren’t hitting with runners in scoring position over the previous five games, they didn’t hit at all in this one. Until Harper’s homer, they advanced only one runner to second base (Scott Kingery in the third inning) and didn’t move any to third.

Hoskins finished 0-for-3 with a walk and has seven hits in his last 45 at-bats (.156). Harper, meanwhile, went 2-for-4 but is nevertheless 11-for-57 (.193) with 20 whiffs in his last 12 games.

Help is on the way with the imminent return of outfielder Jay Bruce, who could be reinstated from the injured list as soon as Thursday night in San Francisco. But Kapler didn’t sound inclined to shake up the lineup, either, even though Hoskins has struggled in the No. 2 spot.

“Rhys is going to hit in the middle of the lineup for us — 2, 3, 4, somewhere in that vicinity,” Kapler said. “He’s got 24 home runs. He’s got nearly a .900 OPS. He’s a very skilled hitter. He’s going to hit in the middle of the lineup for us.”

It scarcely mattered that lefthander Jason Vargas gave up four runs and scattered four hits in five innings in his second start since being acquired in a July 29 trade with the Mets. Vargas grappled with his control at times, and in the third inning, it proved costly with the Diamondbacks scoring twice after Vargas hit Carson Kelly with a pitch and walked Ketel Marte.

Arizona padded the lead in the fourth inning. Wilmer Flores, Nick Ahmed and Kelly notched back-to-back-to-back singles to make it 3-0 before a brain cramp by Kingery led to another run.

Gallen dropped a sacrifice bunt that was fielded between home plate and third base by Kingery. Although Ahmed was more than halfway up the line, Kingery only gave him a passing glance before throwing to first base. Ahmed took off for the plate and easily beat the return throw from Hoskins to open a 4-0 Diamondbacks lead.

“I think we can do a better job across the board than we did tonight," Kapler said. “I think we’re all pretty frustrated. Certainly we’re a much better offensive club than we’re showing. I think when we do play the type of baseball that we’re capable of playing, we’re going to score more runs than we are right now.”

Sure, but it also needs to happen soon for the Phillies or else the wild-card race will start running away from them.