From a terrible and inexcusable loss to a dramatic win ... what a night for the Phillies.
They rallied for a 6-5 win over the St. Louis Cardinals on Aaron Altherr's two-run double with two outs in the bottom of the 10th inning Monday night.
Altherr's hit got a lot of people off the hook.
The Phillies led, 4-0, after the first inning and had only four hits the rest of the way.
The Cardinals came all the way back in a bizarre ninth inning and went ahead on a solo homer by Tommy Pham against Jake Thompson in the top of the 10th.
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The Phillies should have won this one earlier (see story).
With two outs in the top of the ninth, Victor Arano registered the team's 18th strikeout of the game. It should have ended the game and given the Phils a 4-2 win. The pitch, however, a slider in the dirt, got by catcher Andrew Knapp, scoring a run from third and keeping the inning alive for pinch-hitter Kolten Wong to tie the game with a single against Adam Morgan.
Rhys Hoskins started the Phillies' rally in the bottom of the 10th inning with a single.
The win improved the Phillies to 38-32 and a NL-best 23-12 at home.
The Phils came out of the chute with four runs in the first inning against Miles Mikolas.
Nick Pivetta struck out a career-high 13 in 7 1/3 innings of work. Right-handed reliever Edubray Ramos picked up Pivetta with runners on second and third and one out in the eighth. With the game on the line, Ramos registered two huge strikeouts to preserve a two-run lead.
Arano was called on to pitch the ninth. He, too, faced a second-and-third jam with one out. He essentially pitched out of the jam with a pair of strikeouts but the one that would have ended the game went for a wild pitch. It gave the Cardinals life and they capitalized.
In case you're wondering, bullpen ace Seranthony Dominguez was not available after throwing 52 pitches the previous two days.
Pivetta had struggled in his previous three starts this month. He'd lost all three and given up 13 runs in 14 innings.
This one was a different story. The right-hander had dominant stuff from the beginning. He threw 108 pitches and got 21 swinging strikes, 11 on his curveball and seven on his four-seam fastball, which topped out at 97.6 miles per hour.
A day after scoring 10 runs in Milwaukee, the Phillies scored four times in the first inning. Three of the runs came on a home run by Odubel Herrera after Mikolas allowed a leadoff single to Cesar Hernandez and a walk to Hoskins.
Herrera's bat has really come alive after a hellacious slump that dropped him from a league-best .361 to .283 in a 23-game span. Over his last five games, he has nine hits, including three home runs.
Knapp drove in the Phillies' fourth run.
Rightfielder Nick Williams was forced to leave the game in the eighth inning when Matt Carpenter's double clanged off the wall and struck Williams in the face, drawing blood (see video).
Vince Velasquez will look to follow up last week's gem against Colorado in the second game of the series on Tuesday night.
