Phillies stage wild ninth-inning rally to top O’s, pull into three-way NL Wild Card tie

For a while, it seemed like the Philadelphia Phillies’ game against the Baltimore Orioles on Tuesday night would go down as a perfect encapsulation of what’s been a frustrating season for the reigning NL champs.

Philly entered 2023 with sky-high expectations, having followed their magical run to the World Series by signing Trea Turner to a massive contract and openly floating the idea of top pitching prospect Andrew Painter breaking camp in the Opening Day rotation. But every time the team looked to finally be getting into gear, something — whether a rocky start from an uncharacteristically bumpy Aaron Nola or Zack Wheeler or an underachieving offense falling flat — would go wrong. Win a few games in a row? Whoops, here’s a four-game losing streak.

So after Bryce Harper went yard to tie things up in the bottom of the sixth of a massive, massive game on Tuesday night — the kind of moment that defined the team-of-destiny vibes that surrounded the 2022 squad — of course it wasn’t only a matter of time until the other shoe dropped. In this case, Baltimore’s Ryan O’Hearn breaking the deadlock with a solo shot of his own in the top of the eighth:

Baltimore has the best late-inning bullpen combination in baseball with Yennier Cano and Felix Bautista, and really, this was just exactly the sort of game the Phillies had made a habit of losing over the last three months.

Except, well, this time the ending got rewritten — courtesy of a Bryson Stott double into the corner in the bottom of the ninth and a mad dash from first to home from Harper:

That set the stage for Alec Bohm — who went from openly expressing his hatred of the city of Philadelphia to October breakout last season — to play hero:

The Phillies walked away with a most-improbable 4-3 win in one of the most entertaining games of the 2023 MLB season so far — the sort of game whose win probability chart looks like a ride at Six Flags:

But this also felt like much more than just one victory for the Phils. The Orioles came in as arguably baseball’s hottest team, owners of the best record in the AL and threatening to leave the Tampa Bay Rays in the dust in the AL East. To not only win this game, but to win it in that specific fashion — by taking the script of their 2023 season, ripping it up and stuffing it into the trash — felt like a statement of purpose, an indication that there was still some magic left inside Citizens Bank Park. Philly still has as much talent as anybody this side of the Atlanta Braves, if only they can get out of their own way for long enough, and Tuesday’s win created a three-way tie with the San Francisco Giants and Arizona Diamondbacks for the final two NL Wild Card spots. In a season where seemingly nothing has gone right for the Phils, everything is very much still in front of them.