Offense? Anyone?: Pirates 3, Phillies 2

Remember when the Phillies needing pitching at the deadline?

Yeah, looks like the needs may have been a little deeper. In yet another striking bout of offensive ineptitude, the Phillies were downed by the Pirates, 3-2, thanks to a stunning lack of offense against a team that hadn’t reached 40 yet. They got another solid performance from Aaron Nola, but it was wasted by no one able to hit the ball and, yes, another blowup by the bullpen.

In the bottom of the third, Rodolfo Castro singled off of Nola to open the inning, then Kevin Newman tripled to begin the scoring for Pittsburgh. Two batters later, over a drawn in infield, Ben Gamel dumped a ball right in no-man’s land to give the Pirates another run.

The Phillies would try and get things closer, loading the bases on singles from Brad Miller, Alec Bohm and Travis Jankowski. That brought Nola to the plate, who actually delivered with a sacrifice fly to right that scored Miller and brought the score to 2-1. Jean Segura walked to re-load the bases again, but J.T. Realmuto, mired in a huge slump, could not deliver, grounding out to end the inning.

The game stayed scoreless through the eighth when the Phillies were able to push the tying run across when Realmuto doubled to start the inning, then scored on a Bryce Harper RBI single that tied it at two. In the ninth, the Phillies had a chance to take the lead when Ronald Torreyes and Segura singled with two outs, but once again, Realmuto was unable to come up with a clutch hit, sending it to the bottom of the ninth tied.

Jose Alvarado was brought in to pitch, gave up a leadoff double to Bryan Reynolds, then walked John Nogowski to set up Jacob Stallings. Stallings grounded out to Bohm at third, who made a really nice play at home on a charging Reynolds, but the throw was on the first base side of the plate, forcing Realmuto to reach across then back to make a late tag and the Pirates had a victory.

It was yet another embarrassing performance from the Phillies, losing another game to an opponent they should be trouncing and losing ground in the division yet again. They’ll look to newly acquired Kyle Gibson to staunch the bleeding on Sunday.