The Arizona Diamondbacks won their sixth straight game on Saturday and moved to within one game of the Phillies for the final National League wild card spot. Two games remain in the regular season. Arizona holds the tiebreaker. Philadelphia's season is on the edge of a knife.
The Phillies were shut out twice in three days — a 5-1 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers on September 24, followed by a 2-0 blanking at the hands of the Tampa Bay Rays on September 25. In the same stretch, Arizona scored in six of the first seven innings of their Saturday win, extending one of the hottest stretches of baseball in the National League.
The math is brutal. The Padres have already clinched one of the three NL wild card spots, sitting two full games ahead of Philadelphia. The Cubs locked up another. That means the Phillies and Diamondbacks are fighting for the last seat at the table — and should they finish tied, Arizona wins on the tiebreaker.
How It Slipped Away
Philadelphia entered September with breathing room. The offense that carried this team all summer — the lineup that had made the Phillies one of the more feared clubs in the National League — went cold at the worst possible time. Back-to-back shutouts are not just a bad run of luck. They are a sign of a team that has stopped squaring the ball up.
The starting rotation, stretched thin by a long season, has been inconsistent in the final weeks. The bullpen has had moments. But games where you score zero runs are games you cannot win — and the Phillies have lost two of them in three days.
"We have to go out there and play our game. We know what we're capable of. Two games left." — Phillies player, postgame September 25, 2026
Two Games to Flip the Script
It is not over. Two games remain, and two games are enough. But the Phillies need wins, and they need Arizona to lose. They need Citizens Bank Park to be loud. They need the lineup to remember what it looked like in July.
South Jersey has followed this team all summer. The fall was supposed to be a given. Now it is a fight.
Sources: WSAU News, Wikipedia/2026 Philadelphia Phillies season. Published September 26, 2026.