PHILADELPHIA -- The Phillies confirmed what they already knew before they played the Dodgers this weekend at Citizens Bank Park.
They’re a good team, too.
They beat the Dodgers on Sunday afternoon, 8-7 to win the series and hand L.A. its first two losses of the season. Does it mean anything in the long term? No, unless you believe the results of an early-April series can predict what happens in October. Does it give the Phillies any extra confidence moving forward? Maybe. But even if they had not come back to win on Sunday, they still would have considered themselves one of the best teams in baseball.
“I know that we have a good team,” Phillies right fielder Nick Castellanos said. “I know we have the team that is not going to roll over for anybody. I know that we also have the environment where it's the next man up. So if somebody goes down or somebody's getting a day off, the next guy can come in and produce just fine.
“And I think we want to be good, right? We want to show people that we’re a good team. And I think this weekend we did a good job.”
The Phils trailed 2-0 in the bottom of the third when Dodgers right-hander Tyler Glasnow stepped into the rain.
Glasnow was visibly bothered by it.
“We kind of picked up that he was getting flustered, maybe after the first three pitches of the inning,” Castellanos said. “I think we did a great job of just letting him kind of fight against himself."
Glasnow walked the first three batters he faced and four of the first five. He walked Rafael Marchán, Kyle Schwarber and Trea Turner to start the inning. Bryce Harper followed with a bloop single into shallow left-center field to score Marchán to make it 2-1.
Glasnow spiked a first-pitch curveball to Max Kepler, which got away to score Schwarber to tie the game. Glasnow later walked Kepler to reload the bases. It was the first time in eight years that Glasnow walked four batters in an inning.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts ended Glasnow’s day there.
The grounds crew worked on the field as Dodgers left-hander Alex Vesia warmed up to face Castellanos, who had been waiting to hit for maybe five minutes before Vesia finally threw him a first-pitch fastball.
“Just five minutes of being ready to go,” Castellanos said.
He barreled it, sending the pitch into the left-field stands for a grand slam. It was the eighth grand slam of Castellanos’ career, and his first since 2021.
Phillies right-hander Jordan Romano blew the lead in the seventh, lasting only three batters as his fastball lacked life.
It averaged 93.5 mph, down 1.5 mph from his season average.
“Usually when I rear back and want to get one, it’s 96, 98,” Romano said. “Today it just wasn’t there. I feel fine physically. I’m just … I’m not sure.”
“It's something we got to check into, because everything out of the training room, there's no red flags,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said. “But it concerns me a little bit that the velocity's down.”
But the Phillies came back. Harper started the seventh with a leadoff double against Dodgers right-hander Blake Treinen. Kepler walked to put runners on first and second. Bryson Stott hit a soft line drive over the head of second baseman Tommy Edman with one out to score Harper and tie the game as Kepler reached third.
“I was going,” Harper said. “I wanted to score in that situation.”
Edmundo Sosa dug into the batter’s box. Treinen threw a 2-2 fastball at Sosa’s head. Sosa hit the dirt, but he hopped up immediately.
“Stud,” Castellanos said. “You see how eager he was to get back in the box after that. You can’t teach that.”
Sosa then chopped a 3-2 sinker to third baseman Max Muncy, who threw to second for the force out. But Sosa flew down the line to beat Edman’s throw to first to allow Kepler to score and give the Phillies the lead.
Statcast tracked Sosa’s sprint speed at 30.4 feet per second, which is above his average from last season (29.2).
“At the start of the series, somebody asked me, ‘What's it gonna tell you at the end of the series about your club?’” Thomson said. “I pretty much know our club. They’re grinders. They're fighters. They just grind, fight, they claw. And that's who they are. So, I love the club. I love the chance that we have of being special.”