September 04, 2025
Jeff Hanisch/Imagn Images
Trea Turner continues to be stellar for the Phils at the top of the order.
No one wanted to crack in Milwaukee.
Ranger Suárez was excellent on Thursday, delivering six shutout innings, but was matched step for step by the Brewers' Freddy Peralta, who added five scoreless frames to his historic pace, and reliever Aaron Ashby, who kept the scoreboard blank for one more.
Then the Phillies found their break.
Alec Bohm roped a fly ball into right, Isaac Collins dove after it but missed, and that gave Bohm the window to sprint to third for a one-out triple in the seventh.
Two batters later, after Bryson Stott grounded out, Trea Turner saw an 0-2 breaking pitch from Milwaukee's Tobias Myers that was falling way out of the zone.
Turner, though, was able to stay with it. He golfed the splitter into left field, Bohm crossed the plate, and the Phillies took the lead in what stood as a 2-0 win after doubles from Harrison Bader and Bryson Stott in the ninth tacked on insurance.
CLUTCH TREA! pic.twitter.com/i28BWmWlJb
— Philadelphia Phillies (@Phillies) September 4, 2025
David Robertson and Matt Strahm kept the Brewers scoreless through the seventh and eighth to bridge the gap to Jhoan Duran for the save.
And on cue, the Phillies' flamethrowing closer shut the door for the second time in the series, with help from an amazing leaping catch from Bader at the wall in center.
HARRISON FREAKIN' BADER! pic.twitter.com/zhvr76234J
— Philadelphia Phillies (@Phillies) September 4, 2025
There were major ups, and some tediously frustrating downs, like there always seems to be anymore, but the Phillies left American Family Field on Thursday with two of three games taken from a Milwaukee club that is currently holding the best record in baseball.
The Phils are 81-59 now, and still maintaining a 6.0-game lead over the Mets in the NL East race.
They're on to Miami next, then have a pivotal four-game set against the Mets at home due up after, for what could put the division away coming down the stretch of the postseason chase – or blow it wide open again.
Here's a rundown of how the Phillies are looking heading toward it...
Harrison Bader was a homer short of the cycle in last week's 19-4 pummeling of the Braves, and Monday night in Milwaukee, he drove in three runs and scored two more, with each of them crucial, in a slugfest of a 10-8 win. Then he helped to tack on one more run in Thursday's series-closing win.
Since getting acquired from Minnesota at the trade deadline, Bader has slashed .310/.379/.476 with two home runs, six doubles, a triple, nine runs batted in, and 13 runs scored entering Thursday's series finale.
He's been earning the right to keep playing.
And now Bader drops in another! pic.twitter.com/2Aphi8ZxPT
— Philadelphia Phillies (@Phillies) September 1, 2025
So has Brandon Marsh, who, as notorious as his bad start to the season was, has been batting .303 since the All-Star break and knocked in the go-ahead run on Monday night with a one-out base hit in the ninth.
There's even an argument for Max Kepler, who has been seeing more time in right, and even though his slash line has been a bit more modest (.267/.324/.500 since the start of the Seattle series a couple of weeks ago), he has given them at least a little pop with more athleticism in the field.
But then there's Nick Castellanos, and let's not sugarcoat it, his game has been brutal. He's been slashing an abysmal .199/.253/.309 through the second half, has been sitting increasingly more to make way for Bader, Marsh, and Kepler when he was previously an everyday player, and then sat for the second time in the Milwaukee series to close it out on Thursday.
Castellanos' absence from the lineup also came with this soundbite from manager Rob Thomson pregame, via MLB.com's Paul Casella:
Nick Castellanos isn't starting for 2nd time in 3 games. Fair to say RF is a full-on platoon?
— Paul Casella (@Paul_CasellaMLB) September 4, 2025
Rob Thomson: “It looks that way. I mean, you can call it whatever you want, but at this point in the year, I’m gonna put out what I think is the best lineup on any given day to win."
"I mean, if three guys get really hot and one guy's not...yeah," Thomson told the media in his office a couple of weeks back.
Castellanos did play on Wednesday and did collect two hits batting seventh in the order in the loss, but right now, he's been the guy that's "not," which seems to have made right field very much the platoon spot in the outfield coming down the stretch of the season.
So long as Marsh, Bader, and to an extent Kepler are playing the way they are, it has to be. It's the better path for the Phillies, which is a far cry away from where the outfield was at the start of the season, back when Castellanos was the only certainty.
Baseball is a marathon, not a sprint, but things can change quick.
Aaron Nola loaded the bases and got tagged for three runs immediately into his home start last week against the Braves.
He got out, then got bailed out by a 19-run outburst led by Kyle Schwarber's four home run night, and settled down enough to still push through six innings with only one more run allowed (a Matt Olson homer in the top of the sixth).
He got the winning decision, and as rocky as his night looked to start, he showed a flash that he can still offer depth to the Phillies' rotation coming back from a rib injury that sidelined him for more than two months.
Nola's next turn in Milwaukee on Wednesday night, though, felt like it threw that all back into doubt.
The veteran right-hander ran into trouble right away again in the first inning, walking Brice Turang, hitting Jackson Chourio with a pitch, and then allowing a single to William Contreras that put him back into a bases-loaded jam without even recording an out.
And the Brewers tee'd off.
Sal Frelick looped a base hit into center to bring two runs across, then Collins cleared off the bases with a three-run homer launched into right that put Milwaukee up 5-0 before the Phillies could finally stop the bleeding.
Nola had sunk the club into another early hole, but the bats weren't there to dig out of it this time in a 6-3 loss.
Now you have to worry, or keep worrying if you were already there.
The Phillies' rotation, minus Zack Wheeler the rest of the way, has three locks for sure between Cristopher Sánchez, Jesús Luzardo, and Ranger Suárez.
The thing is, all three are left-handers, so ideally, a club would want a couple of righties to vary up the looks.
But Taijuan Walker, who had quietly built himself back up into a dependable right-handed option in the past month, struggled in that disaster of a series against the Mets and then saw it carry over into his next turn on Monday night against the Brewers – The Phillies still rallied to win 10-8, but Walker got hit for two homers and five earned runs through four.
As for Nola, since returning from injury in mid-August, he does have a 2-1 record, but all with an inflated 8.38 ERA, a considerably high 1.50 WHIP, and four homers, seven walks, and 22 hits surrendered across 19.1 combined innings.
The Phillies can't count on that through the season's final month, and definitely not in the postseason, and there really isn't much time left for the club to keep sending Nola out there in the hopes that he can figure something out.
That may be part of why Walker Buehler has been added to the fray now.
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