When Jean Segura stroked a bases-clearing, three-run double in the first inning Monday, he couldn't possibly have known that it would be only his second-biggest hit of the game.
But wins rarely come easy for these Phillies, so why should a Labor Day matinee in New York have been any different?
Never mind that they led by five runs after two innings and had a six-run advantage in the fifth, or that starting pitcher Zack Wheeler was cruising along against his former team, or that the bullpen has been improved over the last two weeks. It still took a two-out single by Alec Bohm to tie the game in the eighth inning and a two-run home run by Segura in the 10th to defeat the Mets, 9-8, and salvage a four-game split at Citi Field.
Segura isn't the first name that comes to mind when you think about the Phillies' high-scoring offense. Entering play Monday, he was batting .237 with a .708 OPS, numbers that would continue a steady four-year decline in his offense.
But Segura finished with four hits and five RBIs, including a laser-beam home run into the bleachers in left-center field against Mets reliever Miguel Castro in a victory that the Phillies needed after dropping back-to-back games over the weekend, including a 14-1 drubbing with Aaron Nola on the mound Sunday.
Staked to a 3-0 lead before he threw a pitch and a 5-0 lead in the second inning, Wheeler came out firing 99-mph fastballs against his former team in his first start at Citi Field since signing with the Phillies. He cruised through the first four innings, overpowering hitters at times and swiftly inducing weak contact at others.
But Wheeler ran into trouble in the fifth. He gave up four doubles, including three in a row to Michael Conforto, J.D. Davis and Dominic Smith, as the Mets halved the margin to 6-3.
When that part of the order came back around in the seventh inning, manager Joe Girardi did something that two weeks ago would have been unthinkable at best, self-destructive at worst. He turned to the bullpen.
Rather than sending Wheeler back out, Girardi put his trust in lefty JoJo Romero, who was appearing in only his fifth career major-league game but didn't give up a run in his first four. Romero's job: retire Conforto and Smith, both left-handed hitters.
Conforto led off with a single, and after Davis singled, Romero struck out Smith. He nearly got out of the inning, too, but shortstop Didi Gregorius threw wide of first base on a potential double play, allowing Conforto to score.
Phelps replaced Romero in a 6-4 game and walked Pete Alonso before giving up a three-run homer on a first-pitch cutter to Jeff McNeil.
Goodbye, six-run lead. Hello, one-run deficit.
But the Phillies rallied with two out in the eighth on another big hit by Bohm, who laid off a dirt-diving slider from Mets setup man Jeurys Familia before lining a single into right field to drive in Segura.
