Author: Scott Lauber

BALTIMORE — A few minutes after it ended — the game, and the Phillies’ losing skid — Dave Dombrowski poked his head into Don Mattingly’s office.

“I was just telling him,” Dombrowski said, straight-faced, “about the four trades we made.”

Winning, it seems, brings out the comedian in everyone.

But the Phillies earned a few moments of levity here Saturday night, near the end of a tension-filled week — less than 48 hours before the trade deadline — with a 5-0 blanking of the Orioles to halt a four-game losing streak.

The record will reflect that they did it with six scoreless innings from Cristopher Sánchez and timely hitting from Alec Bohm, Brandon Marsh, and, with two outs, Justin Crawford in a four-run eighth inning.

A closer inspection reveals the Phillies won by doing the little things. To wit:

• J.T. Realmuto blocked a sinker in the dirt from atypically erratic Sánchez with the bases loaded in the sixth inning before Trea Turner fielded Leody Taveras’ high chopper to extinguish the threat.
• Bryson Stott capped a 15-pitch duel — the longest at-bat in the majors this season — with a one-out single in the seventh inning to knock tough Orioles starter Shane Baz from the game.
• Crawford ran down a ball in right-center field when the game was scoreless in the fourth inning.

“It was kind of a complete game for us,” Mattingly said. “We caught the ball. Sánchy was good, got out of jams, which is not ever going to be easy for you. Just kind of the whole game today felt like a clean game.”

Indeed, little things go a long way.

That’s always true, of course, but especially with the trade deadline bearing down at 6 p.m. Monday. It’s down to the wire for teams on the buy-sell fence. Some clubs, such as the Orioles, may not choose a lane until Monday morning, if at all.

The Phillies, who hold the final wild card in the National League, firmly are in the buyers’ club. But they need a late-inning reliever, a right-handed bat, and probably a starting pitcher to hold off a charge from the Padres and Marlins — and maybe the Pirates and Nationals, too.

Mostly, though, they need to get back to winning.

It was no wonder, then, that Sánchez shrugged off the notion that a start in which he equaled his career-high with five walks was uncharacteristic for him.

“Not weird, not rare,” he said with a smile through the team interpreter. “Just an excellent outing. We won.”

Or that Crawford gave a different answer altogether upon being asked which was more satisfying: his catch to rob extra bases from Taylor Ward early in the game or his two-run single late?

“I think just coming out with a win, honestly,” the rookie center fielder said. “Being able to get that win right there was huge for us. And hopefully we could keep the momentum going and get another one [Sunday].”

It surely will help to have Zack Wheeler on the mound.

The Phillies look like a World Series contender whenever their top three starters — Sánchez, Wheeler, and Jesús Luzardo — are on the mound. Even when they don’t have their sharpest stuff.

Sánchez overcame spells of poor control, twice escaping bases-loaded jams. In the fourth inning, he struck out Taveras on a sinker that clipped the inside corner. In the sixth, with the Phillies clutching a 1-0 lead, Realmuto knocked down a first-pitch sinker in the dirt before Sánchez got the chopper to Turner.

“Oh, it was big,” Sánchez said of sidestepping the sixth-inning jam. “After the inning ended, I just took a deep breath and said, ‘Thank God.’ Too many walks today, and we know that not the type of pitcher that I am or want to be.”

Sánchez also had a few words for the Orioles’ dugout.

“They were yelling some stuff, some things,” he said. “I saw one of their coaches talking a little. But what they don’t know is that those type of things, that motivates me. I take as fuel. That fuels me. I just get motivated by that.”

Given the bullpen’s recent problems, Mattingly surely exhaled after the four-run eighth inning. Rather than a cuticle-chomping finish, lefty José Alvarado was able to work with a big lead before turning it over to Jhoan Duran, pitching for the first time since his blown save five nights earlier in Miami.

“We got a little breathing room there,” Mattingly said.

Dombrowski continues to pursue help for the bullpen, a starting pitcher, and a right-handed bat. The rival Braves landed righty-hitting outfielder Lane Thomas from the Royals late Saturday night. Thomas was a Phillies target, too.

Righty-hitting outfielder Bryan De La Cruz has filled in well. He’s 8-for-18 since getting called up from triple A, including an RBI single to break a scoreless stalemate in the fifth inning.

“De La’s always kind of like day in, day out, you know?” Mattingly said. “He plays solid defense, doesn’t really make mistakes. The at-bats are good.”

It’s something to think about.

Meanwhile, a victory put everyone in a good mood — at least for a night.

BALTIMORE — For six weeks, there was a defined order to how Don Mattingly ran the Phillies’ bullpen.

Then, Brad Keller blew out his elbow.

“I think it’s just a man down, right?” Mattingly said Saturday, a night after Orion Kerkering set a two-run lead ablaze in the seventh inning of a 6-4 loss to the Orioles. “It’s one less guy. And [Keller] was kind of the eighth-inning guy. Any time that guy is no longer there, just like a totem pole, everybody takes a step up.”

At least until the void is filled from somewhere else.

The trade deadline is two days away — 6 p.m. Monday — and president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski is trying to fill multiple needs. Chief among them: late-inning relief, which was amplified by Friday night’s seventh-inning meltdown.

Keller signed a two-year, $22 million contract in the offseason to be the primary setup man for star closer Jhoan Duran. And Mattingly used him as such, with Kerkering and lefty José Alvarado mostly in the sixth and seventh innings.

Without Keller, Jonathan Bowlan has taken on a higher-leverage role alongside Kerkering from the right side. Alvarado has been better lately after an erratic first half in which underlying metrics suggested he was outpitching a poor ERA.

And still, the Phillies are a reliever (or two) short.

“For sure, yeah, we’re concerned,” catcher J.T. Realmuto said. “But we believe we have the guys in this room to get it done. We’ve got guys that have gotten a lot of big outs for us in the last few years and with really good stuff.”

The Phillies have been linked to old friend Jeff Hoffman, who has a 4.02 ERA for the Blue Jays but also has given up two earned runs in 19⅔ innings since June 9. They have expressed interest in Padres lefty Adrián Morejón, but San Diego was only game behind the Phillies for the last wild-card spot entering play Saturday.

Kerkering sounded like he expects that the Phillies will reinforce the bullpen.

“Everyone knows it at the end of the day,” he said. “But I don’t think anyone thinks about it, like when you’re out there or getting ready for the day.”

A change in Painter

Andrew Painter knew he was going to pitch Friday night. He didn’t imagine it would be for the Phillies.

“No,” he said, laughing.

But team officials met Thursday and decided Painter represented the Phillies’ best chance to win a game from the fifth-starter spot. So, they recalled him from triple A, and he gave up two runs in six innings, among his best starts in his brief major league career.

Will he make his next start when the No. 5 spot comes around again Wednesday at home against the Nationals?

“He’s in our rotation,” Mattingly said. “So at this point, there’s no talk of sending him out or anything like that.”

In other words, check back after the trade deadline.

But team officials agreed that Painter demonstrated improvement in his return from the minors. In particular, he ditched his splitter and replaced it with a circle-changeup, which gave him a better offspeed weapon against left-handed hitters.

“The split was great early this year, and then got a little inconsistent and started cutting it,” Painter said. “So I was just looking for some sort of shape that was consistent, something where I knew what it was going to do, where it was going to go when I threw it.”

Painter worked with the Phillies’ pitching department to review starts from his breakout 2022 season in the minors. The effectiveness of his changeup stood out. So, Painter went back to the circle grip and started throwing it in triple-A games.

“It took probably two or three starts to get a feel for the changeup,” Painter said. “It’s such a feel pitch, whereas the splitter, you kind of just grip it and throw it as hard as you can. I feel like not pregripping a splitter 90 times a game helps. I think it helps the fastball a little bit.”

Over the last few weeks, the Phillies have scouted many available starting pitchers, including the Giants’ Robbie Ray, the Blue Jays’ Kevin Gausman, and the Mets’ Clay Holmes and Freddy Peralta.

As the deadline nears, they will have to decide if Painter is more trustworthy in the No. 5 starter spot. He has a 6.72 ERA is 15 games (13 starts).

“If there’s any way I can do that,” Painter said, “it’s something I want to do.”

Rincones sits again

Gabriel Rincones Jr.’s spot in the outfield mix is getting more tenuous by the day.

For the third time this week, Rincones — a left-handed hitter — didn’t start against a right-handed pitcher. Instead, righty-swinging Bryan De La Cruz was in right field. Rincones, on a 2-for-27 skid with 13 strikeouts, is batting .167 with a .488 OPS overall.

“I feel like I’ve watched enough that you’re just not seeing balls getting squared up,” Mattingly said. “If he was hitting balls on the nose all over the place and just not having results, it’d be different then. With what we’re seeing, I think De La gives us a better chance to win today.”

The Phillies are trying to add a right-handed bat before the trade deadline, though Rincones’ struggles may widen the search to include a left-handed hitter, too.

Extra bases

Right-hander Ramon Marquez, an emerging prospect in the Phillies’ farm system, tossed five scoreless innings and struck out seven betters on 68 pitches for high-A Jersey Shore. … Switch-hitting outfielder Steward Berroa cleared waivers and was outrighted to triple A. Berroa was designated for assignment last week. … Zack Wheeler (10-2, 2.53 ERA) is scheduled to start the series finale at 1:35 p.m. Sunday against Orioles righty Kyle Bradish (7-9, 3.74).

BALTIMORE — When the Phillies arrived here this week, they were met by more than a dozen club executives, analysts, and scouts.

It was time for a summit.

In case you hadn’t heard, the trade deadline is Monday — 6 p.m., to be exact. As the hours tick down, Dave Dombrowski is huddling with his lieutenants — owner John Middleton made the short trip, too — to come up with a plan to address multiple holes, with considerable focus on a right-handed bat and a starting pitcher.

And then, Orion Kerkering reminded everyone Friday night that the Phillies need bullpen help, too — maybe more than anything else.

Kerkering, the team’s most trustworthy setup reliever, melted like soft serve in the seventh inning. He gave up four runs and spoiled the return of Andrew Painter (remember him?) in a fall-from-ahead 6-4 loss to the Orioles, the Phillies’ fourth consecutive defeat and 10th in 13 games since the All-Star break.

“It’s frustrating because can’t give this team a chance to win, almost, it feels like,” Kerkering said. “And it [ticks] me the [heck] off — a lot. I’ve just got to figure it out.”

After climbing back from a 9-19 start and reaching a high-water mark of 11 games over .500 on July 20, the Phillies are 57-53. In a 13-day span, they went from two games behind the division-leading Braves to eight back.

Suddenly, even their hold on a playoff spot is tenuous, down to 1½ games over the Padres and Marlins for the final National League wild card. And amid the free fall, Dombrowski put his arm around Bryce Harper after the game in a hallway outside the clubhouse for a chat in full view of players and staff.

“It’s definitely not the brand of baseball that we want to be playing,” said J.T. Realmuto, whose solo homer in the sixth inning opened a 4-2 lead behind Painter. “We’ve got the guys in this room to win. We know that we just have to play better.”

But the roster is springing leaks. Just as Realmuto and Trea Turner begin to give the Phillies more production from the right side of the plate and Painter provides six encouraging innings from the problematic fifth-starter spot, the bullpen is starting to look cooked.

Take Kerkering, for instance. Pressed into even higher-leverage duty after Brad Keller was lost to Tommy John surgery, he has walked five of 25 batters over his last five appearances, including the Orioles’ Colton Cowser with one out after allowing a leadoff single.

“The hits will come, but walks you can control,” Kerkering said. “It’s just one of those things that, it’s been a struggle this year, and yeah, it just [ticks] me off to keep walking guys.”

But interim manager Don Mattingly stuck with Kerkering, and pinch-hitting Christian Encarnacion-Strand ripped a game-tying two-run double on a sweeper that wasn’t a bad pitch.

Truth was, it wasn’t bad enough.

“It was a ball, but we wanted that pitch pretty far off the plate,” Realmuto said. “He’s a guy that, he’ll chase quite a bit, so we were trying to expand pretty big. I thought it was a decent pitch, just not quite what we wanted.”

Still, two batters later, Kerkering was one strike from keeping the game tied. Instead, he hit Pete Alonso with a fastball. Mattingly called on lefty reliever Tim Mayza, who gave up a two-run triple to Gunnar Henderson.

“Kerky, we felt like was the perfect guy for the mixed [lefty-righty] pocket we were going to get there,” Mattingly said. “Even with the pinch-hitter, I thought it was the right guy. It didn’t work out.”

In recent days, the Phillies have sent their scouts to watch starting pitchers, right-handed hitters, and relievers. And while the first two needs might be more essential to getting them into the playoffs, the latter is emerging as perhaps their biggest overall weakness.

Especially if Painter can stabilize the rotation.

The Phillies are 5-22 from the fifth-starter spot, including 12 losses in a row. But Painter, who found out roughly 24 hours before pitching that his next start would be back in the majors, overcame a two-run homer from Alonso in the first inning to get a lead to the bullpen.

With a new grip on his changeup and better command of his fastball, Painter retired 10 batters in a row at one point. When he got Leody Taveras to ground into an inning-ending double play to end the sixth inning, he clapped his glove.

“Andy was really good tonight,” Mattingly said.

Good enough to dissuade the Phillies from trading for a starter? Probably not. Maybe they can address multiple needs by finding a starter who can move to the bullpen in the playoffs. (The Mets’ Clay Holmes or the Giants’ Robbie Ray spring to mind.)

After all, the bullpen torpedoed the Phillies in the last three postseasons, since the 2023 NL Championship Series. In last year’s NL Division Series, the Phillies had 3-2 and 1-0 leads against the Dodgers in the seventh inning of Games 1 and 4, respectively. They lost both games.

Surely, then, the bullpen must still be a concern.

“For sure, yeah, we’re concerned,” Realmuto said. “But we believe we have the guys in this room to get it done. We’ve got guys that have gotten a lot of big outs for us in the last few years and with really good stuff.”

Kerkering sounded like he expects that the Phillies will reinforce the bullpen.

“Everyone knows it at the end of the day,” he said. “But I don’t think anyone thinks about it, like when you’re out there or getting ready for the day.”

Said Mattingly: “[The bullpen] hasn’t been good lately. It’s really been pretty good up until this point. This too shall pass.”

Maybe with a trade or two.

BALTIMORE — Outfielders who are productive from the right side of the plate and potentially available in this trade market are almost as rare as a Mickey Mantle rookie card.

The Phillies are getting an up-close look at one of them.

The Orioles’ Taylor Ward took a .383 on-base percentage into the final weekend before the trade deadline. He would be a fit for the Phillies, who were last in the majors with a .279 on-base mark and .639 OPS from their right-handed hitters.

One obstacle: The Orioles are on the buyer-seller fence.

“We’re not going to have a strong bias in either direction,” Orioles president of baseball operations Mike Elias said before Baltimore opened a three-game series against the Phillies. “We put ourselves in a position where we’re not declaring ourselves to be in one bucket or another in terms of buying or selling.”

The Orioles entered the weekend with a 53-56 record and haven’t been over .500 since April 14 (9-8). But they were only 2½ games out of a wild-card spot in a mediocre, to put it kindly, American League.

Elias said the Orioles are closing in on getting catchers Adley Rutschman and Samuel Basallo, third baseman Blaze Alexander, starter Chris Bassitt, and closer Ryan Helsley back from the injured list.

And unlike National League bubble teams, who would have to contend in October with the superpower Dodgers and Brewers, the field is wide-open in the AL. Any team that makes the playoffs has a chance to make a deep run.

In that case, the Orioles may hold on to Ward, sixth in the AL in on-base percentage. Then again, he’s a pending free agent. And the righty-hitting outfield market got even thinner last week with injuries to the Reds’ Spencer Steer and Giants’ Casey Schmitt.

So, if the Orioles try to buy and sell simultaneously, maybe they can cash in Ward for a controllable asset.

Either way, Elias says he will be “open-minded.”

And he might not decide on anything until the weekend is over. After all, the deadline isn’t until 6 p.m. Monday.

“We are watching game by game,” Elias said. “This has turned out to be kind of a razor-wire situation going into this deadline, 2½ out, three games below .500. I think both of those are really disappointing, not particularly what we hope to be.

“But we still have a shot — a good shot — in the American League. I mean, we are going to be watching the results of tonight’s game, tomorrow’s game, but it’s pretty important at this point that we have an idea of what we’re doing. We do have a shot.

“We do care about making the playoffs in 2026.”

The Phillies are exploring other righty-hitting outfield options, including the Angels’ Jo Adell, the Royals’ Lane Thomas, and the Giants’ Heliot Ramos. Thomas, in particular, would be more of a platoon option.

Ward undoubtedly would be at the head of the class, if the Orioles decide to move him.

Rincones returns

When the Phillies called up lefty-hitting outfielder Gabriel Rincones Jr. on June 12, they intended to start him against all right-handed pitchers.

Until this week.

Rincones, stuck in a 2-for-25 tailspin and batting .171 with a .500 OPS overall, wasn’t in the lineup Tuesday and Wednesday in Miami, even though the Phillies faced righty starters. He returned against Orioles righty Brandon Young.

“I just think, if he’s not in there, then he shouldn’t be here,” Mattingly said. “Gave him a couple of days to kind of reset, work on stuff, and hopefully we get a better version.”

Maybe it comes in the form of a trade, if the Phillies can upgrade Rincones’ spot in the outfield.

“It’s that side of the arm [right-handers] that he’s here for,” Mattingly said. “We’ve got to continue to find out. If we find out that it’s not working, then we have to make a change.”

Extra bases

Kyle Schwarber returned to the lineup after sitting out back-to-back games with a gastrointestinal issue. “He’s feeling better,” Mattingly said. … The Phillies were pleased with Zack Wheeler‘s between-starts bullpen session. Wheeler, who is scheduled to start Sunday, exhibited diminished fastball velocity in his previous start in Miami. “It was never a health[-related] thing,” Mattingly said. … An error charged to Trea Turner last Friday night was changed to a hit, MLB announced. Turner still leads the majors with 18 errors. … Cristopher Sánchez (13-4, 2.73 ERA) is scheduled to start Saturday night against Orioles righty Shane Baz (4-9, 3.98).

Alec Bohm fouled off back-to-back two-strike pitches. He took a close pitch to work the count full and got a piece of another to extend the at-bat.

Then, at last, on Pitch No. 9, Bohm dropped a two-out, three-run double past the diving left fielder, the Phillies’ biggest hit Sunday night in a sweep-averting 11-4 victory over the Aaron Judge-less Yankees.

Eureka!

Hallelujah would’ve been an equally appropriate word. Because no team has gotten less production from its right-handed hitters, even prompting Yankees manager Aaron Boone to call for an intentional walk to load the bases to get to Bohm.

“It’s happened a lot to me in my career,” said Bohm, who often bats behind Bryce Harper. “But, yeah, that time it kind of [ticked] me off.”

Why this time? It seemed sensible that the Yankees preferred a righty-on-righty matchup over Will Warren facing lefty-swinging Brandon Marsh. And Bohm was 20-for-104 over his previous 27 games.

“Honestly, I just feel like I’m kind of the type of player that, through most of my career, you haven’t really wanted to come up in those situations,” Bohm said. “So, I’m just kind of tired of people thinking that I’m an easy out.”

Fair enough. Bohm is a .333 career hitter with the bases loaded, but was only 2-for-9 this season coming into the game. And, in general, Phillies right-handed batters have a worst-in-the-majors .278 on-base percentage and .637 OPS.

It’s no wonder, then, that the Phillies continue to seek even marginal help before next Monday’s trade deadline, according to officials from multiple teams. But given the scarcity of right-handed hitting and the state of their farm system, a marginal upgrade is all they might find.

It’s incumbent, then, upon Bohm — Trea Turner and J.T. Realmuto, too — to balance out a lineup that is disproportionally dependent on Harper, Kyle Schwarber, and Marsh, each of whom bat from the left side.

Another left-handed hitter, Bryson Stott, came up big against the Yankees. He homered and singled against Warren, tacked on a three-run double, and matched his career-high with five RBIs.

But given the state of things, Bohm’s duel with Warren in the third inning in sold-out Citizens Bank Park (credit an assist to the Yankees fans who showed up) turned a two-run game into a low-stress giggler to snap a four-game losing skid.

On a night when Cristopher Sánchez lacked his sharpest stuff, to boot.

“Yeah, it definitely feels good,” said Bohm, batting .221 with a .650 OPS after a brutal start to the season. “I mean, it’s not like I’m mad at them for doing it, or mad at anybody in particular. I know what the numbers say. But I don’t feel like I’m an out going up there. And I think, in those situations, you want to make them feel like they made a mistake.”

Earlier this week, Bohm said he was pleased with his swing and his approach at the plate, even if the results didn’t line up with how he was feeling.

“I’m hitting the ball hard, I’m swinging at the right pitches for the most part, and I’m doing all the things that should be leading to success,” he said. “And it’s kind of been hit-or-miss with the result.

“The process, I guess you could say, has been good more often than not. It’s just not showing up as much on the numbers’ side of things.”

Bohm’s approach against Warren backed that self-assessment.

In a 2-2 count, he fouled off a sweeper and a fastball, then didn’t chase after a fastball that nearly clipped the outer edge of the zone and fouled off another sweeper.

Warren came back with a down-and-away sweeper, and Bohm reached out and stroked it to left field, where Max Schuemann dove despite not having a chance to catch it.

“I wasn’t sitting on a sweeper,” Bohm said. “I was just really trying to fight off anything I could. I was just trying to find a way to hit one forward, really. And then I finally got there with the sweeper.”

Already missing Judge, the Yankees played without left fielder Cody Bellinger, too, after he went on the injured list earlier in the day with a strained left hamstring. The Phillies capitalized on poor outfield play, not only on Bohm’s double. Center fielder Trent Grisham took a poor route to a leadoff triple in the first inning from Turner, who scored on Schwarber’s sacrifice fly.

Stott homered in the second inning to push the lead to 2-0 before Bohm broke it open in the third. The Phillies claimed it was more indicative of their offense than the previous four games — all losses, in which they scored a total of seven runs.

“I think that it obviously shows that we can do it, and that we’re not just talking about it. We have it in us,” Stott said. “We know that. It’s just, trying to swing at our pitches and get guys on and move them in.”

Don Mattingly put it more simply — no less than four times in eight minutes after the game.

“It’s what we’re capable of,” he said.

Yet the Phillies went only 3-6 on their post-All-Star-break homestand against the Mets, Dodgers, and Yankees. They will spend the next week in Miami and Baltimore. Their next home game coincides with the trade deadline.

By then, maybe they’ll have another right-handed bat.

Either way, it would help if Bohm keeps producing.