A well-timed Schwar-bomb: Phillies 4, Mets 1

A night after being no-hit, the Phillies got the first one out of the way early. The only problem was, they couldn’t score any runs. Kyle Gibson started for the Phillies and kept them in the game for a while, but the offense just couldn’t muster any kind of support for him. You could almost feel all the grumpy naysayers talking about the offseason signings not doing their job, not able to get even one run against Taijuan Walker and company.

Then Kyle Schwarber happened.

The Mets took the lead in the fifth when Brandon Nimmo reached on a walk, then went to third on an error on Gibson that put runners on the corners with one out. Francisco Lindor came up and hit a slow roller to Rhys Hoskins, who fired home to try and get Nimmo, but to no avail. The Mets had a 1-0 lead.

It stated that way into the seventh. By then, Walker had departed and Adam Ottavino was brought in. He gave up a one out walk to J.T. Realmuto to bring up Schwarber. Ottavino made a decent pitch to him, but not decent enough.

Later on in the inning, Alec Bohm would walk, steal second then go to third on a throwing error by James McCann. With that runner on third, Odubel Herrera hit his second double of night, making the score 3-1. The Phillies tacked on another insurance run, this one coming from Hoskins, who hit a badly needed solo home run in the eighth to seal the victory.

Lost in all of this was a very good outing by the bullpen. They had some shaky moments over their 4 ¹⁄₃ inning outing, but they held down the fort, Corey Knebel getting his fourth save of the year as the Phillies took the second game of the series.

The two teams go back at it tonight, Max Scherzer going up against Zach Eflin on Sunday Night Baseball.