Schwarber Goes Deep Twice — and the Phillies Salvage the Finale in Twelve

After two nights of gut-punches against Toronto, the Phillies needed somebody to stand up on Sunday afternoon and refuse to let the weekend end quietly. Kyle Schwarber was that somebody — twice — and twelve innings later Philadelphia had itself a 7-6 win, a salvaged finale, and one very good reason to feel better about the drive home.

Schwarber had Toronto starter Shane Bieber’s number all afternoon, taking him deep twice — including a 448-foot blast that landed somewhere in the next zip code — and finishing with four RBI. When your biggest bat picks the biggest day to wake all the way up, that’s the sound a contender makes.

Luzardo set the tone

He wasn’t alone. Jesús Luzardo was dominant, striking out twelve Blue Jays over seven innings and allowing just two earned runs — the kind of start that keeps a team in a game long enough for the bats to decide it. It took a while. The two clubs traded blows into the twelfth, where the Phillies finally pushed across the winner and Toronto’s Lázaro Estrada took the loss. Extra-innings baseball in August is a nerve test, and this time the Phillies passed it.

The weekend, in perspective

Let’s be honest about the shape of it: Toronto took the series two games to one. Friday and Saturday got away, and there’s no dressing those up. But there’s a real difference between losing a series and getting swept, and the Phillies made sure they walked out of their own ballpark on the right side of that line. A club still squarely in the wild-card race — 63-55 after Sunday — can’t afford to hand a good opponent a clean sweep at home, and it didn’t.

The teams that survive an August grind aren’t the ones that never lose. They’re the ones that keep swinging until somebody like Schwarber decides the day belongs to them.Jake Sullivan

There’s a kid somewhere in Gloucester County who stayed up for that twelfth inning and won’t forget it. That’s what this team means to this region. The weekend wasn’t what anybody in red pinstripes drew up — but the last word was theirs, and in a wild-card race this tight, the last word counts. On to the next one.

Based on reporting from MLB.com, ESPN, Baseball-Reference, and StatMuse.