WASHINGTON _ The sun came back out on Wednesday. Birds chirped. It was 85 degrees in the nation's capital, perfect weather for baseball on the first full day in six months that the Phillies didn't play a meaningful baseball game.
Oh, but don't go telling manager Gabe Kapler that these last few days of the season are pointless. He doesn't see it that way, and maybe he's right. The Phillies won't make the playoffs for the eighth consecutive year, but if there are games to be played, there are wins to be gained, impressions to be left, and evaluations to be made, especially with majority partner John Middleton and the entire front office watching from a suite high atop Nationals Park.
And so, on Day 1 AE (after elimination), with "140 Days Until ST2020," referring to spring training, posted in the clubhouse, Bryce Harper slid into second base with two hustle doubles, and Drew Smyly racked up 10 strikeouts in 6 1/3 solid innings, and Brad Miller turned on a first-pitch curveball and blasted it into the upper deck in right field.
And still, the Phillies lost.
Kudos for playing hard and all, but the Phillies' fifth straight loss _ 5-2 to the wild-card Washington Nationals _ dropped their record to 79-79, the first time all season they haven't been above the .500 mark. With four games left, they must go 3-1 to finish with a winning record for the first time since 2011.
"We fell short of expectations,, and that's disappointing," Kapler said before the game. "I think you could point to the offensive side of the ball and we didn't meet expectations there. I could say on the pitching side we fell short as well. However, I think we are in a place where we have continued to fight and grind all the way through today, and I'm excited to help our team to fight and grind and claw all the way through to the end of the season."
Swell. As the organization's chief decision-makers pick apart the scraps of a lost season and try to figure out why the Phillies slid from 33-22 on May 29 to 46-57 since, how much consolation will they take in everyone playing hard?
Maybe it will reflect well on Kapler that the effort level remains high. But the talent gap between the Phillies and playoff-bound Nationals _ to say nothing of the division-winning Atlanta Braves _ couldn't be more obvious.
It barely matters anymore how the Phillies lost another game. For posterity, they blew a 2-1 lead in the seventh inning, when Mike Morin, one of several relievers who wasn't even in the organization until midway through the season, gave up a double, a game-tying sacrifice fly, and an RBI single.
Smyly, another midseason pick-up who was brought in as a low-risk flier to help bolster a starting rotation that was never good enough, had one of his better nights with the Phillies. He didn't allow a hit until Howie Kendrick's two-out, solo homer in the fourth inning, and recorded a season-high in strikeouts. In 12 starts for the Phillies, the lefty posted a 4.45 earned-run average. He will soon find out whether it was good enough to land a major-league deal as a free agent this winter, either with the Phillies or elsewhere.
Rhys Hoskins need not worry about his job security. But the slugging first baseman has been in a miserable slump since the All-Star break, a lack of production that has contributed greatly to the Phillies' offensive inconsistency.
When Hoskins went to the plate in the fourth inning, he lugged an 0-for-26 skid with him. It was no wonder, then, that he smiled ear to ear after his grounder up the middle squeezed into the outfield for an RBI single to give the Phillies a 1-0 lead.
Kapler, ever the optimist, has maintained that one well-placed hit could be all Hoskins needs to emerge from his wicked struggle. But Hoskins was unable to deliver in the eighth inning. With Harper in scoring position as the tying run, Hoskins flied out to left field and dropped his helmet to the dirt in frustration once again.
