Nola, Phils not giving up the fight
WASHINGTON » The Phillies had just had a losing streak extended on the last pitch of a game, and a half hour later, Tommy Hunter already was working the room.
“Hey,” he said, to one clubhouse worker, “are you OK?” Then he said it to another, then another, then to a teammate, each time raising his voice just a little more. Finally, he shouted across the room to a small crowd of writers, and, beaming, wanted to know, “You? Are you OK?”
Assured that all was fine among those who couldn’t do much about whatever was causing the Phillies to keep sliding closer to third place, Hunter provided a small, free-ofcharge belly dance, pumped his fist, said, “I’m OK, too.” Then he pranced out of the room and into what was left of the D.C. night, content that he had reset the proper mood around a team in need of a lift, whether it be comic, inspirational or both.
Hunter is 31, in his 11th season in the big-leagues, a veteran of three playoff teams. So maybe his enthusiasm helped. Just in case, he doubled-down on it Thursday morning, entering the room with voice abooming, just in case anyone was in a mood to pout.
All Hunter seemed to know, all any of the Phillies seemed to know, is that they were facing a crisis point. They’d lost their last four and five of their last seven, and they had fallen three games behind the Braves in a division unlikely to yield a wild-card playoff team. Worse, before the next moon, they would have had to have beaten Max Scherzer, he of Cooperstown destiny, to begin to reverse the trend.
“This is a good test for us,” Gabe Kapler said beforehand. “Big challenge. We have had a tough week, and then had an excruciating loss. Our guys aren’t going to hang our heads. We’re going to come back swinging. We’re going to be prepared.”
Then, he said what needed to be said, what so many were thinking, and what can define the Phillies for the rest of this season and for the next 10 to come.
“We’re looking forward to having (Aaron) Nola on the mound,” the manager said “We have a lot of trust and confidence he can help us weather the storm.”
Staring down Scherzer and any remaining doubt that he could perform at such a level late in August of a pennantpush season, Nola pitched eight innings, struck out nine and walked one in a 2-0 victory. That Scherzer, too, would be crisp, fanning 10 in seven innings and only allowing a tworun, seventh-inning homer to Odubel Herrera, only amplified the resulting truth: On a day when the Phillies could not afford to lose, Nola did what he needed to do to win. Scherzer? He only came close.
“When I went to Colorado last year, we played the Phillies and I was like, ‘You guys better watch out, it’s going to be a fight,’” Pat Neshek said. “There’s a couple of other guys pitching, but we went over the starters, and when we talked about Nola, I’m like, ‘This is going to be a tough one today.’
“And nobody really knew who he was. Now they know.”
There’s no higher a compliment from a competitor or a teammate. And it was never more appropriate than in the Phillies center fielder Odubel Herrera (37) claps his hands as he crosses home plate after hitting a two run homer in the seventh inning against the Washington Nationals on Thursday.
eighth when, with two out and two on, Bryce Harper strutted to the plate. The PhilliesHarper history being what it is, and with the Nats having done the walk-off-Gatorade-bucket routine a night earlier, there was sufficient reason to believe the game, and the Phils’ season, was in peril.
But when Nola struck out
Harper, leaving it to Neshek to successfully close in the ninth, there was suddenly new evidence for what Kapler has been claiming for months.
The Phillies: They fight. “We are a club that doesn’t stay down for long,” Kapler said. “It’s not to say that we won’t have our rough stretches. It’s not to say that we won’t stumble. But we will continue to fight and I think that’s probably what today says. It makes that statement. We will continue to fight.”
They had a chance to crumble Thursday. They still may crumble at some point, with a stressed bullpen staff and a rotation that could use one more steady arm. But the Phillies have Nola, who has nosed past Scherzer in the Cy Young Award race and is gaining on Jacob deGrom.
So they have not crumbled yet.
“I just focus,” said Nola, after shaving his ERA to 2.13, “on what I can control.”
With that, the Phils took off for Toronto, passports and credibility in hand.
“I don’t think anybody is hitting the panic button,” Rhys Hoskins had said, the night before. “I think we’ll be OK.” They were.
Aaron Nola, a fighter, made sure they were OK. Just as Tommy Hunter had expected.
Contact Jack McCaffery @ jmccaffery@21st-centurymedia. com; follow him on Twitter @JackMcCaffery