Dodgers sweep sloppy Phillies out of L.A. with a walkoff grand slam by Max Muncy

LOS ANGELES — Four outs from a sweep-averting victory and a break-even road trip against the twin powerhouses in baseball for the last decade, the Phillies had the perfect matchup Wednesday.

“Alvarado against Barnes?” manager Rob Thomson said. “I’ll take Alvarado. Every day of the week.”

For the record, that’s José Alvarado, the flame-throwing Phillies lefty and most untouchable reliever in the sport so far this season, against Austin Barnes, the Dodgers’ .104-hitting backup catcher. How many times does Alvarado win that duel? Nine out of 10? Ninety out of 100?

But Barnes put a two-strike pitch in play, and the way the Phillies defended in the matinee series finale at Dodger Stadium, anything can happen. Even Edmundo Sosa, the slick-fielding third baseman, could miss a ball that went over his glove and into left field for the go-ahead hit.

And on a day when Bryce Harper lashed three hits, reached base five times, and scraped off the rust in only his second game back from a warp-speed return from Tommy John elbow surgery, the Phillies got punched in the gut, 10-6, after leading 5-0 in the third inning and 5-4 with two outs in the eighth.

“That can’t happen,” Harper said. “We just gave that game away. That can not happen. With the way we want to do it this year and the way we want to play this year, every year, that can’t happen.”

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In the end, it wasn’t Sosa’s misplay — somehow, Barnes got credited with a two-run single — that sunk the Phillies. It wasn’t Nick Castellanos’ right field misadventure that led to a one-out triple for Chris Taylor in the seventh inning, either. Or left fielder Kyle Schwarber’s inability to hold James Outman to a single in the eighth.

The Dodgers won it on Max Muncy’s walkoff grand slam against reliever Craig Kimbrel and celebrated at home plate before a midweek crowd of 36,539. They sent the Phillies to their fourth consecutive loss after winning the first two games of the trip in Houston last weekend.

And now, Harper will make his grand return to Citizens Bank Park on Friday night with a Phillies team that is 15-17.

“The ball ended up in the seats, and I’m walking off the field. It’s pretty frustrating,” Kimbrel said. “I just didn’t make a couple of pitches.”

But it may not have come to that if Sosa had caught a ball that came off Barnes’ bat at only 89 mph. Maybe it knuckled or changed direction. Sosa couldn’t say for certain. It’s a play that he usually makes.

“It’s simple,” Sosa said through a team interpreter. “I should have caught that ball. That’s a play that needs to be made. Honestly, it wasn’t even a very difficult play.”

Instead of getting out of the inning with a 5-4 lead, the Phillies trailed 6-5. Harper brought them back in the top of the ninth. He cracked a two-out single to right field and scored from second two batters later on Bryson Stott’s game-tying single.

Kimbrel, who fumbled the Dodgers’ closer job late last season and was left off the postseason roster, gave up a leadoff single to Chris Taylor in the ninth. It was downhill from there. Kimbrel loaded the bases on an intentional walk of Freddie Freeman and a walk to Will Smith before Muncy ambushed a first-pitch fastball.

And so, after trouncing the Phillies by a 26-5 margin in the first two games of the series, the Dodgers finished off the sweep in a series between teams that have visions of winning the pennant.

There were times when they didn’t belong on the same field.

“When you play the game the right way, play it sound, you win a lot of games,” Harper said. “There were some mistakes made today, and I think there’s been some mistakes over the last couple weeks that we just need to clean up, myself included. I need to play the game the right way, do things the right way. Just as a whole, we need to be better.”

Said Thomson: “We took it on the chin here the last three games. But you’ve got to dust yourself off and get after it again.”

Harper has one default speed — full speed — but for weeks, team officials wondered how he would react the first time the game caused him to put his reconstructed right elbow in harm’s way.

In the third inning, they found out.

The first of Harper’s three hits — so much for being rusty, right? — caromed off the side wall and kicked into left field. He zoomed around first base, arms pumping, legs churning, just like usual. But he chose to slide feet-first into second base.

“I didn’t even think there was going to be a play at second base,” Harper said. “I didn’t even think about sliding headfirst or feet-first. It just kind of worked out the way it was.”

Harper wore a cumbersome brace over his right elbow when he ran the bases. But the Phillies were upset in the ninth inning that, with the new pace-of-play rules, he wasn’t given time to put on the brace.

On the plus side, Aaron Nola pitched into the seventh inning and left with a lead. On the minus side, it was a one-run lead after he’d been staked to a 5-0 edge in the third inning.

Nola allowed four runs on seven hits in 6⅓ walk-free innings. The biggest blow against him was Miguel Vargas’ two-run homer in the fourth inning that shaved the margin to 5-3.

“Left that fastball over the plate, and Vargas put a good swing on,” Nola said. “It was kind of a dagger. Other than that, I felt pretty good.”

Nola’s average fastball velocity remained down a tick from his previous seasons, a factor that Thomson attributes to the gradual build-up of arm strength after a shorter-than-usual offseason.

Backup catcher Garrett Stubbs contributed to the big fourth inning with, of all things, a two-out safety squeeze.

Making only his second start in 14 days — and with his family in town from San Diego to attend the game — Stubbs pushed a well-placed bunt to third base and beat it out. Brandon Marsh, who wasn’t running on the play, scored easily, while Stubbs celebrated with pelvic thrusts in the direction of the dugout.

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