Offense shut down, Phillies lose 3rd straight for first time since Memorial Day originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

PITTSBURGH — The Phillies couldn’t protect leads on Friday night, couldn’t hit on Saturday night and have opened the second half the same way they closed the first half: by losing a series.

The Phils fell to the Pirates, 4-1, and have dropped three straight games for the first time since May 26-28 in Colorado and San Francisco.

They scored seven runs in the first five innings of Friday’s walk-off loss but were held scoreless in 12 straight from that point until Bryce Harper‘s solo home run in the ninth inning Saturday.

The Phillies mustered only three hits in seven innings off of Pirates starter Luis L. Ortiz, a two-out double down the line by Nick Castellanos in the second, a two-out single from Johan Rojas in the fifth and a leadoff bloop from J.T. Realmuto in the seventh. Ortiz was stingy otherwise, keeping the Phillies off balance with a four-pitch mix (four-seam fastball at 96 mph, cutter, slider, sinker) that he used almost equally.

The Phillies are 62-36 as they look to avoid a sweep Sunday behind rookie Tyler Phillips.

“He just missed barrels. We hit a ton of pop flies on pitches that guys felt like they were putting good swings on,” said Realmuto, who returned to the lineup after missing 32 games with a meniscus injury. “He was throwing that cutter that was a little deceptive, looked like it was gonna break and we all missed it, hit under it. He just did a good job of keeping us off balance with that.”

There just weren’t many scoring chances on Saturday night. The Phils had runners on second and third with two outs in the top of the second but the inning ended with Brandon Marsh‘s pop fly to shallow left. Realmuto reached base to begin the seventh but was quickly erased when Bryson Stott hit into a 4-6-3 double play.

Stott has really struggled the last two months, hitting .200/.261/.259 in 188 plate appearances since May 21. Edmundo Sosa started the first game out of the All-Star break at second base against a lefty and it will be interesting to see if he’s back in there Sunday vs. Marco Gonzales.

Manager Rob Thomson has attributed some of it to Stott falling into modes where he is either overly aggressive or overly passive. The Phillies are seeking a better balance from him in that regard.

“I think he’s sort of forcing it a little bit,” Thomson said postgame. “A lot of flyballs to left field. He’s got to get on top of the baseball. He’ll come out of it. He can hit.”

Cristopher Sanchez started for the Phillies and began with five razor-sharp innings. He had put just four men on base over five scoreless innings when Andrew McCutchen greeted him with a 431-foot bomb to the deepest part of PNC Park in left-center to open the bottom of the sixth.

The next batter, Bryan Reynolds, singled then was retired on a 6-4-3 double play. Sanchez nearly made it out of the inning but Nick Gonzales singled and Oneil Cruz nearly homered to right field, doubling instead to score a second run and chase Sanchez.

“Felt like his slider was a little bit inconsistent today so we didn’t use it as much as we wanted to,” Realmuto said of Sanchez. “He threw the ball well, attacked the zone, just felt like the slider wasn’t there today so we weren’t able to do some of the things we wanted to.”

Cruz homered off of Matt Strahm two innings later to drive in two more, important insurance since the Phillies had Trea Turner, Harper and Alec Bohm due up in what otherwise would have been a two-run game.

McCutchen’s homer was only the third allowed by Sanchez in 109 innings this season. He and Reynolds have been pests to the Phillies this weekend with the number of pitches they force and the way they’ve ended their plate appearances.

“You’ve got to attack them and make them put the ball in play because they’ve got really good plate discipline and they’re gonna chew up pitches,” Thomson said.

Sanchez is 7-5 with a 2.97 ERA through 19 starts. Thomson pulled him Saturday at 90 pitches, a similar limit to what the team had in mind for Aaron Nola on Friday. The Phils will be cautious in the second half not just with Ranger Suarez and Zack Wheeler — set to return Monday and Tuesday — but with their entire rotation.