NEW YORK _ Blake Parker pounded his fist into his glove Sunday afternoon, looked up to the sky, and took a deep breath. It was finally safe to exhale.
Parker loaded the bases with no outs in the seventh inning of a 10-7 win but escaped by allowing just one run against the heart of the Mets order. He retired Jeff McNeil, forced Pete Alonso to pop up, and froze Michael Conforto with a low fastball.
It was a flirtation with disaster, but it ended with the Phillies six outs away from a needed victory. They won two of three this weekend at Citi Field, picked up a game in the wild-card race, and returned home with some momentum for a week that will be quite the test.
The Phillies gained a game on the Cubs and Diamondbacks, the two teams ahead of them for the National League's second wild-card. They will be just two games out of the playoffs when they open a four-game series on Monday against Atlanta to begin a six-game homestand against the Braves and Red Sox. Sunday was a win, but there's little time to celebrate.
Gabe Kapler said Saturday night that the Phillies were playing with "a chip on our shoulders." They felt, Kapler said, that everyone was counting them out. But the Phillies did not agree. The Phillies, Kapler said, would "keep fighting and clawing for every last inch." And they needed plenty of fight on Sunday.
They used eight pitchers, scored runs in six innings, and offered a response each time the Mets inched closer.
The Phillies took a three-run lead in the seventh on a full-count, two-run homer by Scott Kingery. An inning earlier, their three-run lead was cut to just one when Jose Alvarez allowed two runs.
Kingery fell into a quick two-strike count, but clawed his way back to stay alive. His homer provided some breathing room for a beleaguered bullpen that had a hand in three-straight losses earlier this week.
The Phillies tacked on another in the inning when Bryce Harper came off the bench with his bruised hand and worked a bases-loaded walk. The Phillies were a strike away from handing their bullpen a one-run lead. The final stages of Sunday's game would have felt quite different if Kingery gave in. Instead, he fought back.
This weekend was the start of a 20-game stretch against teams with a winning record. The fight is just getting started. If the Phillies are to make the playoffs, they'll have to take down teams like Atlanta and Boston and Cleveland and Washington while the Cubs play 11 games against the Pirates and Padres and the Diamondbacks play the Marlins, Padres, and Reds.
They'll need to rely on pitchers like Parker and Nick Vincent, who handled the eighth, and Mike Morin, who picked up a key out in the sixth. The Phillies scored 10 runs on Sunday, but a lead never felt safe. The fight was never easy. And it will be that way for the final three weeks of the season. If the Phillies are to reach October, they'll have to earn their way there.
Vince Velasquez started Sunday and allowed three runs in the first inning on back-to-back homers with two outs. The Phillies had an early hole against Noah Syndergaard. If they were to win Sunday, they would need to fight and claw like the manager said they would.
They scored four times against Syndergaard, took a lead, and then watched the Mets take it right back. They took the punch and kept moving. Phil Gosselin dropped a bloop single into right field and Maikel Franco, the next batter, followed with a two-run homer to left. The two players had spent most of the summer in triple A, but now they were helping the Phillies keep their wild-card dream alive. The three-week fight had begun.
