We’re back, baby: Mets 5, Phillies 3

Welcome back to 2016 Phillies baseball, where the trade talk is minimal and Peter Bourjos runs the offense! You forgot, didn’t you. You forgot about that.

How did you spend your break? Meals eaten with loved ones, and not thrown at the TV? Watching your mouse hover over the “purchase” button for a Cody Asche shirsey? Screaming at a tattoo artist to “get it right” in regards to the exact replica of Vince Velasquez ink you’re getting on your arm? Earnest and productive activities, all of them. And now the Phillies have returned to fill your nights and occasional afternoons.

Last night, they lost.

Jeremy Hellickson’s job right now is to go out on the mound and look as desirable as possible. He did not do that while giving up four earned runs, seven hits, and two homers in six innings. It wasn’t baseball’s steepest second half deficit, so any teams who had interest in Hellickson yesterday should still call about him if they want to, and it was about what you’d come to expect from a perfectly mediocre Hellickson start. Juan Lagares touched him for a solo shot in the second and Neil Walker crushed a three-run home run in the sixth. So the comeback win was on - now all the Phillies needed were more runs than the Mets.

I mean, four runs? These Phillies can score ten runs, apparently, so let’s just get Peter Bourjos to the plate with runners on in the sixth and see what happens. In this case, he tripled, because this is the world we live in now. That brought in Odubel Herrera to score, and after a Maikel Franco RBI ground-out brought in Bourjos, the other Phillies powerhouse, Asche, came to the plate and hiccuped a back-spinning blooper into left with runners on first and second. Another run came home, making it 4-3 and utterly delighting Freddy Galvis, who spent the night as a victim of several spiffy Mets defensive plays.

Andrew Bailey entered to pitch the seventh, and a lead-off walk to Lagares eventually led to an RBI trickler off the bat of human-shaped rat pile Jose Reyes. He departed after getting only one out - Bailey, not Reyes, unfortunately - but the Mets wouldn’t score another run on the night - Edubray Ramos, David Hernandez, and Daniel Stumpf (Hey, Daniel Stumpf!) held them to no runs, two hits, and a walk.

The Phillies, too, were held to no more things. From the seventh inning on, their offense could only produce a Ryan Howard single and nothing else. Perhaps this was a microcosm of the Phillies season; unheralded players stepping up, average pitchers being average, and the offense being there, but never being there enough. It’s almost like after watching this game, we don’t need to watch any of the others.

We will, though. Because you have to do something while the arm infection from the back alley tattoo parlor heals.