The Hottest Team in Baseball (71-58) won their seventh straight game with a 7-6 extra innings walk off victory against the St. Louis Cardinals (66-64) to pull within four games of the NL East leading Atlanta Braves.
The Cardinals opened the scoring against Jesus Luzardo with a two-out, two-run home run by Joshua Baez in the top of the first inning. It was Baez’s first home run since hitting three in his major league debut last Saturday.
The Phillies got back to even in the second inning with a lead-off walk by Bryson Stott and a pair of RBI doubles by Brandon Marsh and JT Realmuto.
Alec Bohm gave the Phillies their first lead in the bottom of the third with an RBI single that scored Luis Arraez who reached on his 28th double of the season.
The Cards jumped back in front with another two-run home run in the sixth, this time by persona non grata, Jordan Walker. Luzardo finished with 110 pitches over 5.2 innings pitched.
It was the Phillies’ turn in the bottom of the inning as Bohm and Marsh singled, Realmuto hit his second RBI-double of the game, and Justin Crawford hit a go-ahead RBI sacrifice fly to make it 5-4.
Orion Kerkering got two outs in relief of Mayza in the seventh inning and came back out in the eighth. He allowed a lead-off single to Alec Burleson, got the next two outs and then hit Everson Pereira. Brooks Raley came in to pitch to the lefty, Bryan Torres, who laced an 0-1 single to right-center to tie the game at five.
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Jhoan Duran pitched a scoreless ninth and the offense went down in order in the bottom of the ninth to take the affair to extras.
The Cardinals went ahead in the top of the tenth on a single by Jose Fermin off of Alex McFarlane.
With Bryce Harper as the ghost runner, Luis Arraez hit a single to right off of Luis Gastelum to put runners on the corners for Bohm, who sent a 2-2 sweeper to deep center field for a two-RBI triple to walk the thing off.
Bohm is now tied with Kyle Schwarber for the team-lead in RBI with 74. He is slashing .371/.416/.529 in the month of August.
Andrew Painter is set to face Andre Pallante in the middle game of the series tomorrow night.
