PHILADELPHIA — For the Phillies, the final month of the season has proved over the last three years to be the most difficult as their playoff hopes have faded each September. This year, they thought, would be different. The schedule was aligned for them to reach October by simply beating some of baseball’s worst clubs over the last weeks of the season.
But nothing comes easy for the Phillies, who fell, 5-4, Sunday to the Rockies to lose three of four at home against baseball’s worst road team. Aaron Nola came up short, the lineup didn’t do enough against a hittable starting pitcher, and Garrett Hampson — who has struggled mightily away from Coors Field — homered twice to crush the Phils.
If the Phillies fail to chase down Atlanta, remember weekends like this when they were overmatched by the Rockies and their .291 winning percentage on the road. The Phillies have 19 games remaining and their final 10 home games are against the Cubs, Orioles, and Pirates. The schedule is still in their favor, but that meant little this weekend.
Nola’s fifth inning
Nola retired 12 of the first 13 batters he faced and finished the fourth inning with seven strikeouts. Nola was cruising, but he still had to overcome his toughest obstacle all season: the fifth inning.
Those troubles continued as Hampson sent Nola’s 0-2 curveball for a three-run homer in the fifth to give the Rockies a 3-2 lead. Nola has a 10.57 ERA (27 earned runs in 23 innings) in the fifth inning, the highest mark in the National League. It was all the damage Nola would allow, but his outing ended in the next inning with one out in the sixth.
The Phillies need more this month from Nola, who has completed six innings in just one of his eight starts since August.
Hampson’s homers
The Denver Post made a viral blunder a few years ago when it ran a photo of Citizens Bank Park and labeled it as Coors Field. Maybe Hampson made the same mistake on Sunday.
He entered Sunday hitting .169 with a .469 OPS on the road and .301 with a .857 OPS at home. So of course, he homered twice in South Philly. Hampson’s three-run homer off Nola put the Rockies ahead by a run and his two-run homer off Hector Neris in the seventh broke a 3-3 tie.
