PHILADELPHIA — The Cardinals’ best stretch of baseball brought them into the home and face to face with one of the team’s playing the best in baseball this season.
And one of their own decided the game.
Edmundo Sosa, a former Cardinal who worked his way through years in the minors to debut with the Cardinals, drilled a two-run homer early in Friday night’s game against his former team. Sosa’s 439-foot blast to center field proved the difference in a tight but decisive 4-2 victory for the Philadelphia Phillies at Citizens Bank Park. The loss, only the Cardinals’ fourth in their past 16 games, kept them from rising to a winning record for the first time in nearly 14 months.
The weekend figures to be a test not just of the Cardinals’ recent stretch of strong play but their overall potential against one of the NL’s top teams and a handful of its top starters.
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It began for the Cardinals with losses before they even took the field.
A few hours after placing Lars Nootbaar on the injured list with an oblique strain, the Cardinals scratched leadoff hitter Brendan Donovan from the lineup with a stiff neck. Donovan is considered day to day. The absence of two of their top left-handed hitters changed the look of the lineup that already was trying to score rookie Masyn Winn a day off. Winn’s replacement, veteran Brandon Crawford, had the Cardinals’ first two hits against Phillies starter Aaron Nola.
Crawford’s solo homer to lead off the third and Nolan Arenado’s solo homer to leadoff the seventh were the Cardinals only runs.
Arenado is the third Cardinal to homer in consecutive games this past week.
At 44,742 tickets sold, the largest crowd of the season so far at Citizens Bank Park saw the Phillies do something they have done only twice before in their long, colorful history.
Arguably the best team in the National League, the Phillies won their 40th game of the season in their 58th game on the schedule. Only twice before — first in 1976 and then again by the hard-charging 1993 club — have the Phillies claimed their 40th win of the season within their first 60 games. The Phillies made the playoffs in each of those previous seasons, losing the NLCS to the Big Red Machine in 1976 and losing the World Series to Toronto in 1993.
The win upped the Phillies record at home this season to 23-8.
Cardinals starter Miles Mikolas allowed three runs on five hits through six innings for a quality start. A slider he sent spinning over the plate was all Sosa needed to give the Phillies the decisive run. Nola (7-2) was superb, throwing more curveballs than any other pitch and luring the Cardinals into six swings and misses on it.
Crawford flashes his range
Starts, like hits, have been few and far between for veteran shortstop Brandon Crawford. A strong opening to the season by rookie Winn has reduced the number of games set aside for Crawford, and the four-time Gold Glove winner came to Philadelphia with only three starts in the past 24 days for the Cardinals.
It’s a new role for the longtime Giant.
It’s a difficult role for the longtime everyday player.
“He understands the role,†his manager said a few times Friday.
He made the most of it a few hours later Friday.
Crawford drilled his first home run of the season to give the Cardinals an offensive pulse against Nola. The veteran added a single later to give him both of the hits the Cardinals had against the Phillies’ right-hander through six innings. The home run was Crawford’s first since September of last season and only his second since Aug. 1.
He found more ways to contribute than just with his swing. In the fourth inning, Crawford ranged to his left, dove, snared the ball, and got to his feet in time to throw out Nick Castellanos at first base. In the sixth, he turned a double play that started with Nolan Gorman making a backhanded stop of a groundball and, in the same motion, flipping the ball up for Crawford to meet at the base and complete the turn for Mikolas.
When Crawford came up in the seventh inning, the Phillies lifted Nola for lefty Matt Strahm. That ended Crawford’s evening as Winn and his 18-game hitting streak entered. The pitching choice could have been a curious one for the Phillies. Nola had allowed two runs on two solo homers and struck out six through six-plus innings, and the right-hander was nearing his 100th pitch. But the choice to go with Strahm meant Winn would be in the game and finish it at shortstop and that Strahm had to face switch-hitter Dylan Carlson from his more productive side. The move worked out as Strahm retired both Winn and Carlson.
Winn’s hitting streak ended at 18 games.
Liner splits glove, starts rally
Before Sosa sent a baseball out to Ashburn Alley and the Phillies into an early lead, there was a liner that split the leather of a Gold Glove third baseman.
To lead off the second inning, Philadelphia third baseman Alec Bohm drilled a pitch that left his bat at 109 mph. The line drive went straight to Nolan Arenado’s glove — and through it by apparently snapping the lacing holding the fingers and webbing together. Between batters, Arenado had to race to the Cardinals’ dugout for a brand new glove, complete with a glistening gold Rawlings patch that only Gold Glove winners are permitted to have on their gloves.
The broadcast of the game showed a member of the Cardinals’ training staff restitching Arenado’s gamer glove in the dugout while the Phillies turned it all into a rally.
Bohm reached third on Castellanos’ double, and then Bohm scored on a groundout for the first run of the game. Castellanos was the runner on base when Sosa connected for his fourth homer of the season. The burst of three runs portended to continue a May trend for Mikolas all the way to the month’s final day. In his past five May starts, all of the runs scored on him in the individual starts came in a single inning — a burst of a rally and then zeroes elsewhere.
Going into the second half of Friday’s game, the most recent time he allowed a team to score in two or more innings was May 1 in Detroit.
Arenado had his original glove repaired and back on by midgame.
Right up his Alley
In his fifth game against his original team, Sosa put a baseball where few Phillies have in recent seasons. The concourse beyond center field at Citizens Bank Park has all the usual local fare and flair to go with some space to invite a street fair-like feel, right down to some pre-game congestion.
It’s nicknamed Ashburn Alley after the Phillies’ great Richie Ashburn, a Hall of Fame outfielder and a beloved broadcaster, along Broad Street.
And the Phillies track who hits homers there.
Sosa’s two-run blast to center traveled an estimated 439 feet to become the first Ashburn Alley home run by a home player since July 22, 2022. That was eight days before the Cardinals traded Sosa to the Phillies in a win-win deal for lefty and current setup man JoJo Romero.