The Philadelphia Phillies just beat the Cardinals 6-4 by clawing back from four runs down in the ninth inning, and at this point I’m convinced nobody in baseball can actually stop them. Down four in the ninth and it still felt inevitable, which is not a sentence I expected to type about a team I have zero rooting interest in.
Nine straight wins. Three straight sweeps. I don’t even like this team and I could not turn the game off. Atlanta has to be sweating this.
The Braves still hold the NL East by three games, 76-55 to Philadelphia’s 73-58, but a three-game cushion means something very different when the team behind you just clinched its ninth straight win by hanging six runs on a bullpen that’s supposed to close those games out. Atlanta’s quiet deadline is going to look a lot worse in September if this keeps up.
A three-game lead in June is comfortable. A three-game lead in the season’s final six weeks against a team playing exactly like this is not the same math, and Atlanta knows it.
Bryce Harper opened the ninth with a double, and for a second the inning looked dead. Luis Arraez and Brandon Marsh both made outs against a Cardinals pen sitting comfortably on a 4-0 lead. Then, per the Inquirer’s account of the rally, J.T. Realmuto singled and Justin Crawford drew a walk to load the bases with two outs, which is exactly the spot where a comeback either dies or gets real.
It got real. Edmundo Sosa ripped a bases-clearing double down the left field line to make it 4-3, and ESPN counted five different Phillies hitters who worked through two-strike counts during that stretch, the first time Philadelphia has won a game trailing by four-plus runs with two outs in the ninth since April 1983. Bryan De La Cruz singled up the middle two batters later.
Tie game, 4-4.
Then Schwarber happened.
Down 2-2 against Cardinals closer Riley O’Brien, Schwarber crushed a 459-foot, two-run homer at 108.5 miles per hour off the bat, extending his MLB-leading home run pace to 39 for the season. It was Philadelphia’s first walk-off since July 2023.
I watched the whole ninth inning with my sister’s group chat blowing up in the background, the way it always does when something ridiculous happens in a game none of us have money on. This is Schwarber’s second walk-off of this Cardinals series and his third of the month, and PhillyVoice pointed out that Philadelphia hasn’t swept three straight series since September 2010. Nine straight wins, three straight sweeps, and a win streak that shows zero signs of stopping.
https://twitter.com/MLB/status/2091621488902164591
Watch the dugout empty in that clip and tell me this doesn’t look like a team that already knows how the next six weeks go.
I’ll admit the obvious complication because it’s there whether I mention it or not. This is one series against one bullpen, hot streaks end, and Atlanta has erased bigger gaps than three games in past Septembers. But grading a team in late August isn’t about the whole season, it’s about who looks scariest right now, and with Harper starting rallies and Schwarber ending them, nobody in the crowded playoff race looks scarier than Philadelphia does tonight.
September doesn’t care how a team got hot. It only cares whether they’re still hot when it counts, and right now nobody in baseball is hotter than the Phillies.
