August 17, 2025
It was a classic weekend in Philadelphia Phillies baseball: A rollercoaster bordering on disaster.
Jhoan Duran, the flamethrowing closer who almost singlehandedly shifted the energy of the club since getting acquired at the trade deadline, took a line drive off the foot Friday night in Washington and needed to be carted off – when the cart could finally get there, that is. The X-rays came back negative, though. Philadelphia breathed a sigh of relief, and Duran was back out in the ninth a couple of days later in a spot where they suddenly needed him again.
That same night, Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper, the current MVP candidate and the former MVP superstar, homered back-to-back to pile on the runs in a resolute win over the Nationals.
The next day, no one on the Phils could hit a thing. Taijuan Walker pitched through 6.2 innings with only two runs allowed to continue what has been a quietly impressive run for the long-struggling right-hander, but the Phillies' bats couldn't back him up. Washington starter Cade Cavalli shut them out for 7.0 innings, then reliever Jose Ferrer locked down the remaining two to make for a 2-0 Phillies defeat.
But there was a silver lining. Aaron Nola was set to finally return on Sunday after looking solid through his rehab assignment in Triple-A Lehigh Valley, and so was third baseman Alec Bohm after missing just shy of a month from a pitch that ran inside and broke a rib.
The Phillies were going to get healthier, and hopefully stronger...
Then word broke later Saturday that ace Zack Wheeler has a blood clot near his right shoulder and will be going on the 15-day injured list with no idea yet on when, or if, he could return. Philadelphia was back to holding its breath.
On Sunday, Bohm homered to help spot Nola a 6-0 lead, and Nola himself looked strong in his first start back...for two innings. Then the veteran right-hander hit what has become a frustrating trademark of a wall in the third, loading the bases and allowing the Nationals to open up the floodgates for a six-run rally that wiped a sizable lead away in an instant.
Nola only lasted 2.1 innings before Tanner Banks took over.
The Phillies still won Sunday's game (barely) 11-9 on the back of a two-run single from Weston Wilson, a badly-needed homer from Nick Castellanos, and an emergency save from an a-OK Duran. They took a series split with the Nationals across a four-game series, too.
But it was a rollercoaster, complete with the team's expected highs, long-persisting and still just as baffling lows, and the avoidance of a near devastating injury to a key arm, only to be left with a scary and highly uncertain one to the club's best one.
The weekend bordered on disaster, it felt like. And the next couple of days could still push it all over the edge as the Phillies return home to face the Seattle Mariners for a three-game set...
Or they could still persist.
Nick Castellanos and the Phillies can be frustrating, but they've also played through worse.
Brad Mills/Imagn Images
The weekend had its frustrations, and now a very high injury concern for Wheeler. But the Phillies have played through plenty of the former already, yet sit with a 71-53 record and a 5.5-game lead in the NL East over the stumbling Mets.
The rest of August into September, however, could end up looking different from what most would've expected all the way back in late March and early April.
The Phillies' greatest strength, their starting pitching, might not be able to lean on Wheeler and Nola anymore. It could be on Cristopher Sánchez leading the charge, with Ranger Suárez finding a way back toward consistency while Walker and Jesús Luzardo try to maintain their own down the order.
As for the bats? Schwarber is only pushing deeper into the MVP race and should continue to be the focal point of the Phillies' lineup, but all with that free agency cloud looming and the cost seemingly only getting that much more expensive with each homer launched way into the seats.
Bohm should help fortify the middle-upper half of the order, too, now that he's back, especially if it's with a 2-for-4 effort at the plate like he turned in on Sunday.
But then that cloud of the bats suddenly going ice cold always lingers, too, and remains ever-infuriating when it happens, as it did in Saturday's loss.
Yet still, they're in good shape standings-wise.
It's just with the Phillies, it seems to have to be a rollercoaster getting to that state.
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