Phillies swept away by Nationals, return home with losing record for first time all season

WASHINGTON -- It was approximately 3:05 p.m. on March 28 when Bryce Harper sprinted onto the field at sold-out Citizens Bank Park, turned to the delirious fans in the right-field seats, and bowed like an actor at the end of a play, thereby ushering in what was billed as the dawning of the next great era in Phillies history.

One hundred eighty-three days later, about 7:05 Friday night, Harper will return to that spot as the right fielder of a losing team.

It has come to this. After dropping their sixth game in a row, 6-3 to the Washington Nationals on Thursday, the Phillies trudged home from an unforgiving 11-game road trip with a losing record for the first time all season.

They are 79-80, locked into finishing in fourth place, and they must sweep a three-game series from the last-place Miami Marlins -- against whom they have gone 7-9 -- to close with a winning record for the first time since 2011.

"I don't think we expected it to go this way," catcher Andrew Knapp said. "I think there's a lot of factors that go into that -- injuries and stuff, where guys are being put in situations that they normally wouldn't be in if we had a lot of those bullpen arms. Who knows what would've happened? But yeah, I don't think we expected it to go this way."

Injuries were part of it, sure. The Phillies lost their left fielder (Andrew McCutchen) in June, their No. 2 starter (Jake Arrieta) in August, and almost their entire opening-day bullpen. Without all of them, it was going to be difficult for the Phillies to stay in contention.

But that isn’t the whole story. It can’t be. This demise was too precipitous for such a simple explanation.

The Phillies opened the season with four consecutive victories. They were 11 games above .500 on May 28. They occupied at least a share of first place in the National League East for 76 of the season’s first 83 days and were in possession of a wild-card spot at the All-Star break.

Since then, though, they have gone 32-37, including 10-15 in September after an 8-20 final month last year.

Majority partner John Middleton, who dropped nearly a half-billion dollars on the roster in the offseason, was here at Nationals Park this week to watch the Phillies get eliminated from playoff contention and will be at Citizens Bank Park this weekend.

Presumably there will be a reckoning.

"I'm not trying to color this rosy," manager Gabe Kapler said. "We just lost five games straight to the Nationals. They kicked our ass. That's the cold, harsh reality of this. However, there are some guys doing some things in there that make this very different from last year's club.

"I think a fully healthy Philadelphia Phillies is an entirely different ballclub than we have right now. I don't think anybody can dispute that."

Kapler, who has one year left on his contract, continues to maintain that the Phillies are playing hard until the end. But results still matter, and the Phillies went 3-8 on the three-city swing despite winning the first two games in Atlanta.

The last four days in the nation’s capital were a nightmare. The Phillies became the fifth team in the 21st century to get swept in a five-game series, according to MLBsweeps.com. They finished with a 5-14 record against the wild-card Nationals, including 1-9 in games started by aces Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, and Patrick Corbin.

But don't tell the Phillies that there's a talent gap between them and the top teams in the division.

"No, I think a healthy Phillies team is definitely in there," Knapp said. "I think everyone in this clubhouse thinks the same thing."

Jason Vargas couldn’t stop the losing. He allowed one run in the first inning and one in the second, and was lifted for reliever Edgar Garcia with one out and the bases loaded in the third. All three runs scored.

When the Phillies acquired Vargas from the rival New York Mets on July 29 as their primary trade-deadline addition, they expected him to bolster the starting rotation. In 11 starts, the soft-tossing lefty posted a 5.37 earned-run average. The Phillies went 4-7 in his starts.

Vargas’ one-word self-assessment: “Mediocre."

"I think there's been some pretty solid ones, but I definitely have not pitched my best here," he continued. "It's just disappointing to not throw the ball as effectively as I can as often and put us in a better situation to have some success that would have kept us on rolls that we needed to be on."

So now the Phillies return home, 183 days after they first arrived, to end the misery.

“I don’t know that [the fans’ reaction] will be anything glaringly different,” first baseman Rhys Hoskins said. “Hopefully we can play some good baseball. I think that’s always something that will be positive in the fans’ eyes. Try to go home, finish strong, play good baseball, and then we turn toward 2020.”

That last part can’t happen soon enough.