The Phillies were up on the Braves Tuesday night in the eighth inning and had Jordan Romano warming up in the bullpen.
Romano had been so much better as a late-inning arm in the past few weeks, but holding on to just a 1-0 lead, they needed one more.
Small ball got them by.
Edmundo Sosa grounding out and then Kyle Schwarber striking out to put two outs on the board didn't set the Phils up well, but it did take Braves reliever Daysbel Hernández 11 pitches to work through.
Then Alec Bohm worked five and rolled a ground-ball single into center, Nick Castellanos saw his pitch on the second and strung it to the same spot, Max Kepler kept the bat on his shoulder and watched four straight balls go by to load the bases, and then J.T. Realmuto waited out six more pitches from Hernández to score the runner at third on a second straight walk.
The Phillies made it 2-0 just from chipping away at their NL East rival, and the crowd at Citizens Bank Park was on its feet over it. Johan Rojas had the chance to do even more damage, but in a full count, he whiffed on an overwhelming fastball that finally got Hernández and the Braves a break.
But it was alright. The Phillies had their insurance, and Romano shut the door in short order to close out the series-opening win.
As a club that's been defined almost exclusively by the long ball ever since Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber became the major faces of it – offensively, speaking – that noticeably hasn't been the Phillies' MO at the plate so far in 2025.
Sure, Schwarber is still in a chase with the Dodgers' Shohei Ohtani for the NL lead in homers, but as a team, the Phillies entered Wednesday night with 58 of them combined, which is tied with the Reds for the 11th most in baseball.
Where the Phillies are much higher up? Singles (6th in MLB with 480), walks (5th with 204), on-base percentage (3rd at .336), and walks to strikeout ratio (2nd at 0.49).
Tuesday night, more specifically, and even without Bryce Harper, they beat Spencer Strider and the Braves with a second-inning Bohm walk and a Kepler double to score him, and then that bases-loaded jam they trapped Hernández into in the eighth.
It was a slow burn, not a bright flash that was gone just as quickly, and that could be the difference for the 2025 Phils when the games matter the most later down the line.
The World Series aspirations are still there, but so is the sting from how last season ended.
The majority of the lineup wanted to constantly swing for the fences, and lacked plate discipline with a glaring tendency to chase after pitches because of it. The upstart Mets keyed in on that, exploited it, and sent the Phils home early in the NLDS – completely stunned.
And maybe that changed them.
A month into 2025, the Phillies' chase rate percentage dropped from a 25th-ranked 30.3 percent in 2024 down to 26.3, which ranked sixth in the majors.
Now at the end of May, their chase rate has gone back up a couple of ticks to a 19th-ranked 28.3 percent, but many of their on-base numbers elsewhere are within MLB's top 10, including their fifth-best .329 weighted on-base average.
Yeah, power is down for the Phillies this year, but maybe that's not the worst thing.
Because they can play small ball, and as Tuesday night showed, they can win with it, too.
*STAT SOURCES: Baseball Savant, FanGraphs
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