The Phillies keep finding new ways to make the ninth inning feel like their personal playground.
On Friday night against the Los Angeles Angels, Edmundo Sosa stepped in as a pinch-hitter and blasted a go-ahead grand slam to left-center field, a swing that held up in a 5-3 Phillies win. It was the kind of blast that changes a game in one instant - and it also pushed Philadelphia into some rare air.
As Jayson Stark of The Athletic pointed out, the homer was the Phillies’ fourth ninth-inning go-ahead shot this season, which leads all of MLB in a pretty wild category.
"That's the Phillies' 4th go-ahead homer with 2 outs in the 9th this season," Stark notes. "No other team has even hit 3. The other NL East teams have hit 2 combined."
That stat only gets more absurd when you line up the moments. Four games earlier, Kyle Schwarber delivered a walk-off homer against the St.
Louis Cardinals in a 4-0 ninth-inning comeback that started with two outs and ended with the Phillies on top. Earlier in the season, Bryson Stott broke an 8-8 tie against the Nationals with a three-run homer in the ninth after Brandon Marsh had tied it with a two-out blast three pitches earlier.
The next night, Derek Hill homered in the top of the ninth against Washington to put Philadelphia ahead 5-4, and that one came with two outs and two strikes.
Bryce Harper also had a ninth-inning go-ahead homer against the Nationals, giving the Phillies three straight nights with a homer in the ninth to take the lead over Washington. That one doesn’t count in Stark’s two-out statistic, but it fits the same larger theme: this team keeps delivering late.
The bigger picture is simple. A club doesn’t usually stack this many dramatic late-inning swings in one season, especially not with two outs hanging over everything.
No other team has done it more than twice, and the other four NL East teams have combined for just two. That’s the kind of number that jumps off the page.
It may not be something the Phillies can bank on in October. But for now, they’ve built a reputation for staying dangerous until the very last out.
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