After raining down a club-record seven home runs Tuesday night in Cincinnati, the Phillies got rained out Wednesday.
The Reds announced the postponement at about 10:30 a.m., two hours before the scheduled first pitch of the series finale. The game will be played Monday, June 28, a mutual day off for the teams, at 6:40 p.m.
It was an inopportune time for inclement weather. The Phillies’ offense, dormant for most of April and May, woke up on the first day of June with a 17-3 trouncing of the Reds. Ronald Torreyes, Odúbel Herrera (twice), Andrew McCutchen (twice), Rhys Hoskins, and Matt Joyce went deep, the third time in franchise history that the Phillies hit seven homers in a game.
So much for building on that momentum.
The Phillies are off Thursday, too, before opening an eight-game homestand Friday night against the Washington Nationals. It will mark the return to full capacity at Citizens Bank Park for the first time since Sept. 29, 2019.
It wasn’t immediately known if the Phillies will alter the starting rotation. Rookie right-hander Spencer Howard had been scheduled to start Wednesday. With back-to-back days off, the Phillies could skip his turn and stay with Zack Wheeler on Friday night.
The Phillies have an unusually light schedule in June with seven days off, including Wednesday. They wouldn’t absolutely need a fifth starter, presumably Howard, until June 16 at Dodger Stadium.
Regardless, the Phillies talked Tuesday about starting fresh in a new month. They went 12-16 in May and lost six games in the standings to the division-leading New York Mets. They began June at a season-worst four games below .500, and the schedule is about to toughen again with 14 games against National League East rivals, two against the Yankees, and six on the West Coast against the Dodgers and Giants.
“We’ve struggled a little bit for the first couple months, haven’t played our best baseball. But so what?” third baseman Alec Bohm said. “We’ve got about 100 games, a little more, left. Let’s attack those ones and not worry about the ones that are already behind us.”
