Philadelphia Phillies Overcome Wild Ninth, Pull Further Ahead of Cardinals

The Philadelphia Phillies won the second of a four game series with the St. Louis Cardinals on Saturday afternoon. It was a pitcher's duel which featured Kyle Gibson tossing 7.0 innings of scoreless baseball for the Phillies with Dakota Hudson going 6.0 scoreless for the Cardinals.

It was a tight game with both teams combining for just seven hits on the afternoon, most of which came in the later innings. All of the action occurred in the ninth when the Phillies scored the lone run of the day off a sac fly from Alec Bohm.

As much as the third baseman has improved at the plate, his performance in the field has continued to be subpar. Despite giving the Phillies the winning run in the ninth, he nearly gave the game away in the bottom of the same inning.

Corey Knebel was called upon to close the game for Philadelphia, his first such opportunity since June 14. He walked Yepez to start the inning and then had to face the gauntlet of Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado.

Goldschmidt hit a grounder to Bohm who then woefully misfired to Bryson Stott at second. Instead of a potential double play opportunity, it put runners on first and third with no outs.

Knebel buckled down and struck out Arenado with a curveball for the first out. He continued to work diligently getting Dylan Carlson to ground out at first and then got Corey Dickerson to fly out to right field.

It was the type of game that the Phillies would have lost over the past three seasons. Instead, this Philadelphia team feels different from prior iterations. With this win, the Phillies increased their lead on the final NL wild card spot.

They have two more against St. Louis with first pitch for game three scheduled for 2:15 p.m. EST on Sunday afternoon.

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