After a come-from-behind game on Tuesday night where the team left double digits on base, the Phillies scoring woes continued.
ABOVE PHOTO: Philadelphia Phillies’ Rafael Marchan plays during a baseball game, Wednesday, June 19, 2024, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
By Chris Murray
For the Philadelphia Sunday SUN
The Phillies got yet another solid outing from starting pitcher Ranger Suarez, who allowed just one run on six hits with four strikeouts. The one run he did allow was a solo home run by Padres centerfielder Jackson Merrill in the second inning.
Unfortunately, the Phillies didn’t give him any run support for him to come away with the win. Bryce Harper’s two solo home runs in the third and eighth innings weren’t enough as the Padres came away with a 5-2 win over the Phillies on Wednesday afternoon at a sold-out Citizens Bank Park.
The Padres’ right-handed knuckleball pitcher Matt Waldron mesmerized the Phillies all day by mixing his knuckleball with a variety of other pitches. In seven innings on the mound, Waldron allowed just one run on five hits. He threw 104 pitches — —48 of which were knuckleballs.
“That knuckleball was pretty good, and when you face a guy that throws a knuckleball, you tend to know what to do with it, but (Waldron) is a lot different than the other guys. He has four and five other pitchers that he tends to throw,” said Phillies second baseman Bryson Stott.
The Phillies had a chance to get to Waldron early. With one out in the first inning, they had the bases loaded after a Kyle Schwarber walk, a double by Stott and Alec Bohm was hit by a Waldron pitch.
Waldron then struck out Nick Castellanos and got centerfielder Brandon Marsh to fly out to end the threat. Outside of Harper’s two homers, the Phillies didn’t have much offensively to mount a rally to win the game.
“He had a good command of his knuckleball today and it kept us off balance a little bit,” Stott said. “His pitches were good, and they were moving all sorts of ways. We couldn’t do it this time around.”
Meanwhile, Suarez did everything he could to keep the Phillies in the game, playing in front of his wife Joseany Cabello, and his two children, 6-year-old daughter Sofia and 3-year-old son Dominick. While he was happy to have his family in the ballpark watching him for the first time, he was still about the business of helping his team.
“I have to come in and focus on my game. It is nice to see your family watching you pitch,” Suarez said through team interpreter Diego D’Aniello. “I still have to focus on the game and focus on what pitches I have to throw and try to allow the fewest runs possible. That’s what I tried to do today. We lost today, but we won the series.”
Phillies manager Rob Thomson said Suarez had another great game while having his family in the ballpark for the first time.
“He was really good, first-pitch strikes, and his stuff was good,” Thomson said.
The Padres took command of the game in the seventh and eighth innings. San Diego took a 2-l lead on an RBI single by first baseman Luis Arraez that scored Jackson Merrill from third.
In the top of the eighth, the Padres broke the game open on a base-loaded three-run triple from catcher Kyle Higashioka to give San Diego a 5-1 lead. The Phillies got the second of Harper’s home runs in the bottom of the eighth inning, but it wasn’t enough.
The Phillies will have the day off on Thursday before starting a three-game series Friday at Citizens Bank Park against the defending National League Champion Arizona Diamondbacks, the team that defeated them in the NLCS last season. You can catch the game on Apple TV and 94.1 WIP.
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