Phillies heartbreak: Romano falls on 3-run, inside-the-park walk-off HR originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

SAN FRANCISCO – On a night when the Phillies biggest slugger tried to use his legs to kickstart a struggling offense, the team saw a streak of going hitless with runners in scoring position finally snapped at 26.

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Slugger Kyle Schwarber launched one into McCovey Cove, of course the game would end in dynamic fashion. Problem for the Phillies was, they weren’t the ones that provided the drama.

Entering the bottom of the ninth with a 3-1 lead and reliever Jordan Romano needing to go into a second inning, the Phillies saw what would have been a very impressive win for various reasons become one of the more improbable losses in quite some time.

Romano gave up a double to Casey Schmitt to lead off the inning before coaxing Jung Hoo Lee into an infield pop out. But a Wilmer Flores single to center moved Schmitt to third.

Then nine-hole hitter Patrick Bailey hit Roman’s first pitch to the wall in right field where it took a crazy carom towards center, past Brandon Marsh. Before the Phillies could get the ball to the infield, Bailey crossed home plate for the first inside-the-park walk-off home run in the majors since 2016 for a 4-3 Giants win.

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“It’s a little different (starting another inning) but I’ve done it a ton in the past,” said Romano, whose ERA is now 7.44. “It’s not that difficult to do. I just need to do a better job of it. It’s tough, not contributing to wins, losing games like that. It’s baseball, sometimes. Definitely been tested a lot this year, not pitching well. No time to sulk. Trying to figure this out, trying to get better. But right now it’s not really working.”

“I’m not sure I’ve seen that before, inside-the-park home run to win the game,” said manager Rob Thomson. “It’s a difficult loss.” That’s probably the understatement of the season, maybe for many seasons as the Phillies lost their fifth walk-off of the year and are now 2-12 at Oracle Park since 2021.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Apparently that’s the motto Kyle Scwharber lives by, or at least one that he subscribed to against the San Francisco Giants on Tuesday.

While the main story surrounding the Phillies of late has been the dominance of their starters, the side story, and quickly becoming more and more prominent, is the team’s inability to hit with runners in scoring position.

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They entered Tuesday 0 for their last 24 there, and saw it climb to 26 when, with Johan Rojas on third and Trea Turner on second after a double steal in the third with one out, Schwarber struck out and Bryce Harper grounded out to end an inning, but kept an ominous streak alive.

A couple of innings later, Schwarber decided to try and kickstart the offense with something besides his bat – his legs. With him on first with one out in the sixth and Alec Bohm at the plate, Schwarber stole second. Either delirious with success or desperate to jumpstart his team, the speed-challenged Schwarber then tried to swipe third as Bohm took ball four. He didn’t quite make it. Schwarber got picked up though, as Nick Castellanos singled Bohm to second and Otto Kemp ended the RISP drought with a double to left to score Bohm and tie the game at 1-1. It was the next inning when Schwarber returned to form, in a huge way.

With two out and Brandon Marsh on second in the seventh, Schwarber smashed an 0-2 Spencer Bivens changeup into McCovey Cove. The trot around the bases seemed much more natural and the Phillies had a 3-1 lead. It was not to be, however.

“That ball just hit the perfect spot, cause there’s a little peak out there and it just hit it and really kicked hard,” said Schwarber of the game-winning hit. “That’s kind of an unusual carom here. It happened, it’s over. It doesn’t feel good. You just got to be able to keep moving on and worry about tomorrow.”

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As for the baserunning? “I felt like he wasn’t paying much attention and I got kind of a walking lead and I just went. A good pitch was thrown, they made a heck of a throw and it was a good tag. I would have probably done that nine out of 10 times and probably going to be safe, but it was a bang-bang play. If you’re successful there then you get first and third it’s a good thing. But when you get thrown out you just feel like you want to melt into your chair.”

All of the questions recently asked to Thomson and Taijuan Walker after it was announced he’d rejoing the rotation:

What will his pitch count be?

How did he take the news?

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Would you rather be a starter than a reliever?

What’s going to be the schedule for him moving forward?

All legitimate questions … and all answered to satisfaction by the two leading up to Walker’s first start since May 30th. One that wasn’t asked and probably not even thought of was this:

What if Walker gets better as the game progresses?

Funny, oddly, that’s sort of what happened.

Walker said on Monday that he thought he’d be able to throw “60ish” pitches, and after he was up to 40 through just two innings, and with a 1-0 deficit, all seemed about normal for the expectations on the hulkish pitcher. But Phillies starters have exceeded expectations all season long, and Walker wasn’t about to be outdone simply because he’s a part-timer now at this starting stuff.

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He got through two more innings on just 23 more pitches. He got the Giants in order in the fourth, his final pitch a strikeout of Rafael Devers on an 85 mile-an-hour slider.

“That second inning could have gotten away from me but we limited it to one run and got the doubleplay,” said Walker. “The next two innings were shut down innings. I thought the last two innings were really good.”

Was there thought for maybe one more inning? “Maybe if it was a different scenario,” Walker said. “But we’re half way through the season now. You’ve got to be smart. I’ve been bouncing back and forth, starting and relieving, so we have to be smart about it.”

Tanner Banks, Max Lazar, Matt Strahm and Daniel Robert combined to throw 3.1 scoreless innings and Romano came into the eighth to get two outs on five pitches. But it was the ninth that did him and the team in.

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“We got kind of caught back in the corner because we didn’t have (Orion) Kerkering,” said Thomson. “So Strahm pitched the seventh against all those lefties and I wanted to use Romano in the ninth because of the intensity of the whole situation. We liked Robert’s slider on that group (to start the eighth). Once he got through his three hitters I felt like it was time to get rid of that inning. Romano came in and did a great job. I felt like he could probably finish it out.”

He couldn’t and now the Phillies are 0-2 on this six-game West Coast swing that has them playing Wednesday afternoon against the Giants before heading to San Diego for a three-game series against the Padres.