RANGER IS FINE, MAGIC NUMBER IS NINE

BY ROCK HOFFMAN

The Philadelphia Phillies scored nine runs – all with two outs, Kyle Schwarber hit his 50^th home run of the season, becoming only the second Phillie to accomplish the feat, and Ranger Suárez had a career-high 12 strikeouts as the Phils reduced their magic number to nine to clinch the National League East with a 9-3 win over the New York Mets on Tuesday night at Citizens Bank Park.

KYLE SCHWARBER JOINS RYAN HOWARD AS THE ONLY PHILLIES WITH 50 OR MORE HOME RUNS IN A SEASON.

“Masterful,” was how Phillies manager Rob Thomson described Suárez’s performance. “He was in the strike zone when he needed to be and out of the strike zone when he needed to. [He] kept everybody off balance and gave us six strong innings.”

Suárez allowed just one hit over the six innings he pitched; he walked three and kept the Mets off the scoreboard to lower his ERA to 0.88 over his last five starts (three earned runs in 30.2 innings).

“It feels great,” said Suárez, through Phillies’ interpreter Diego D’Aniello, when asked about the career high. “I usually don’t strikeout a lot of guys, I’m more of a pitch to contact guy, but every time we got into two-strike counts we tried to put them away and we could do that.”

The Phils' abundance of two-out lightning started in the first inning, when Bryce Harper singled to right on a full count. J.T. Realmuto was hit by a pitch on Mets’ starter Sean Manaea’s first offering. After going down 0-2, Nick Castellanos doubled to the left field corner to score both baserunners.

In the second, Otto Kemp hit his fifth home run of the season, becoming the first Phillie to homer on their birthday since Maikel Franco on August 26, 2018. Harrison Bader, batting in the leadoff spot, followed with a round-tripper of his own.

After that, Manaea didn’t allow another hit (he left after five innings), and the Phils' next hit didn’t come until the seventh when Bryson Stott beat out an infield single for the 500^th hit of his career. With two outs, Bader singled, then Schwarber blasted his 50^th Schwarbomb of the year. The ball rang off the area just below the pitch clock and above the Monty’s Angle sign in center field.

“It’s cool,” Schwarber said about joining Ryan Howard as the only Phillies with 50 or more home runs in a season, “the stat of how many people have done it before in the game, so, it’s something you don’t take lightly.”

The Mets scored single runs in the seventh, eighth, and ninth innings. The Phillies’ final two runs came in the eighth on a two-out RBI single by Stott, he would score on a hit by Bader.

Thomson didn’t realize all nine runs came with two outs, “This team really fights,” he said.