Phillies Cannot Complete the Sweep on the Phanatic’s Birthday
Apr 20, 2025; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Orion Kerkering (50) reacts after allowing a three-run home run during the eighth inning against the Miami Marlins at Citizens Bank Park. Mandatory Credit: Eric Hartline-Imagn Images
While many people celebrated Easter on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, the Phillies — and 45,079 fans — celebrated the Phanatic’s 47th birthday during their series finale.
Unfortunately, the team was unable to gift the Phanatic a win for his birthday. They did, however, secure a series win for him the day before as an early birthday gift. The finale was a fitting end to an offensively rich series as the teams combined for 12 runs on 23 hits in 10 innings. It was a frustrating loss, one that was avoided in yesterday’s game, as the Phillies had a three-run lead in the seventh — and seemingly a series sweep in their grasp — but the bullpen ultimately fell short.
Prior to today’s game, the Phillies called Cal Stevenson up from Lehigh Valley in lieu of Brandon Marsh, who is taking a 10-day injured list trip for his hamstring. Marsh had been struggling all season and was supposed to get three days off to get things right during the Giants series, but ended up sitting out only one game. Not to speculate, but the Phillies staff may have sent Marsh on a “phantom IL” trip to give him some time to get mentally sound.
Possibly forgotten in today’s extra-inning loss would be Jesús Luzardo‘s stellar start, which sustains his phenomenal 2025 season for the Phils. Luzardo worked through seven innings, scattering eight hits worth one earned run, and struck out seven in the process. He threw only 88 pitches, and if it weren’t for a slight hiccup in the seventh inning, we would’ve seen him back out for the eighth. Unfortunately, Bryce Harper misplayed a groundball, which was a double-play opportunity, and Bryson Stott then misplayed one of his own. These rare blunders from a defensively sound right side of the infield were costly in the seventh and gave Rob Thomson reason to utilize his bullpen in the eighth. But as he did all day long, Luzardo generated weak contact to limit the damage done by the defensive blunders and maintained a two-run lead.
There have been struggles amongst the allegedly strong Phillies’ pitching staff. Zack Wheeler has a 3.76 ERA, which is poor for his standards, and Aaron Nola has a 6.65 ERA himself. But the bright spot of the rotation has been the offseason acquisition of Luzardo. Today, Luzardo handed the Phillies one of his best performances this season, second to his electric Dodger start, but the bullpen couldn’t preserve the lead. It has been a recurring theme that the bullpen is a weak link, except for last year, and one can only hope Dave Dombrowski has help on the way.
On the other side of the ball, the Phillies racked up 10 hits and five runs, three of them coming in the first inning. As he typically does, Stott managed a pesky leadoff at-bat as he dropped a bunt down for a hit. Trea Turner followed it up with a single into left, and Harper came to the plate with two on and no outs.
The lefty-slugger continued heating up at the plate today with this two-run double he ripped into the gap. Nick Castellanos added another run with a line drive into right. Though that seemed to be the peak of the offense today.
Coming off a phenomenal game Saturday, the top of the order delivered again for the Phanatic’s birthday, and Thomson is further vindicated for his lineup change he made two weeks ago. Stott, Turner, and Harper combined for five hits in thirteen at-bats, and all three scored one of their five runs. Appears as though Thomson has his lineup versus righty pitchers set in stone with these three dominating. Even better is that they are followed up by Schwarber and Castellanos, who are both hitting exceptionally well. The Phillies are set to face right-handed pitchers in two of the three games against the Mets.
We also saw some production coming from Rafael Marchán in the cursed Rav4th Inning, sponsored by Toyota. Marchán threw a runner out with a dart down to second in the top half of the inning and then followed up Alec Bohm and Johan Rojas‘ hits with an RBI single himself. It’s only his second hit this season, but a nice sign for the young catcher who will see an uptick in innings behind the plate.
After a solid seven innings of baseball were played, the Phillies’ bullpen started to falter, and that started with Orion Kerkering. The righty-reliever got himself into a two-runners-on, no outs jam yet managed to get a pop out and strike out. for a quick two outs. But, just as everyone took a sigh of relief, he hung a slider for a three-run home run to Marlins outfielder Javier Sanoja, giving up the lead. The eighth inning gets more dramatic as, newly called up, Stevenson came to the plate with runners on second and third with two outs. Stevenson delivered with a weakly hit groundball that was bobbled, and one run came through to tie the game.
A scoreless ninth inning brought us to extras, which means a baserunner starts on second base due to the “California rule.” Matt Strahm quickly got the first out with a fly ball to right, but that was followed up with a bunt-single from outfielder Dane Myers, and then a sac-fly to give the Marlins the lead. Myers then stole second base, allowing Sanoja to cap off his five-RBI day with a single to extend the lead by another run.
The Phillies were unable to move their baserunner on second in the bottom of the tenth and dropped the series finale.
Hopefully, enough people were occupied with Easter or other Sunday festivities and were lucky enough to miss the end of today’s game. The silver lining is that they still won the series, and the starting pitching and offense looked quite dominant. The Phillies will be back in action tomorrow as they start their six-game road trip at Citi Field against the Mets.
Sean Regenye
Sean Regenye is a sophomore broadcast journalism major at Penn State University. He is a die-hard Philly sports fan and loves baseball, especially the Phillies.
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