Nola bounces back, leads Phils past Nats

WASHINGTON » Aaron Nola bounced back from the shortest outing of his career to throw seven strong innings, and the Philadelphia Phillies took advantage of the Washington Nationals’ sloppy outfield defense to rally for a 3-2 victory on Wednesday night.

Bryce Harper, who won the 2015 NL MVP during a sevenyear stint with the Nationals, delivered the go-ahead RBI single in the seventh to help the Phillies win their third in a row. The defending World Series champion Nationals have dropped three consecutive games to drop to a season-high six games under .500.

Nola (3-2), who threw a careerlow 2 2/3 innings Friday in a loss at Atlanta, gave up two runs on five hits while striking out eight. Tommy Hunter tossed a perfect eighth.

Recently acquired closer Brandon Workman escaped a two-on, one-out jam by striking out Eric Thames and Victor Robles for his second save since joining the Phillies

from Boston and sixth overall.

The Phillies trailed 2-1 entering the seventh against Washington starter Patrick Corbin, who yielded a solo homer to Rhys Hoskins in the third but had otherwise avoided serious trouble. Didi Gregorius led off with a hit to left that Juan Soto dove for and missed, turning a likely single into a triple.

That ended Corbin’s night, and Alec Bohm greeted reliever Will Harris (0-1) with a single to right to tie the game. After a fielder’schoice grounder put Roman Quinn on first, Andrew McCutchen hit a routine fly to deep right-center, but Robles and Adam Eaton collided in what was scored a single. Two batters later, the speedy Quinn easily scored from second on Harper’s looping single to left to give the Phillies the lead.

Phillies manager Joe Girardi became the 65th manager in major league history to win 1,000 games, improving to 1,000-808 in 12 seasons with Florida (2006), the New York Yankees (2008-17) and Philadelphia (2020).