Same lineup, old results for Nats in 3-2 loss to Phillies (updated)

PHILADELPHIA - When Chip Hale asked Davey Martinez for tonight's lineup, the Nationals manager looked at his bench coach with a skeptical eye. Uh, they scored 17 runs and launched seven homers Friday night. They were going with the exact same lineup tonight, no need to ask.

Past success, especially fleeting past success, of course does not guarantee future success. Martinez knew this, but he also knew you don't tempt the baseball gods after a game like that. So he instructed Hale to fill out an identical lineup card and then hoped for the best.

The Nationals wound up getting something far less than the best during a 3-2 loss to the Phillies. They got one early run from the bottom of their lineup, then a solo homer from Anthony Rendon in the sixth. But that's all they got, reverting back to the form that had become commonplace before Friday's out-of-the-blue explosion, despite literally knocking the Philadelphia starter from the game in the second and getting seven innings against a tired bullpen.

"Yeah, I thought we were going to score more than two runs after yesterday's performance," Martinez said. "We had our chances there later in the game. But when you get into a bullpen like that, you expect to score more runs."

The two late chances came in the eighth and ninth innings, with the tying runner in scoring position each time. The Nationals had two on and nobody out in the eighth, with the red-hot Rendon and Juan Soto at the plate. But Phillies reliever Yacksel Ríos, who threw 41 pitches Friday night, got Rendon to line out to right and got Soto to pop out to short on his first pitch.

With two outs and the tying runner stuck on second base, Mark Reynolds stepped to the plate. Daniel Murphy, out of the lineup for the second straight game, was on the bench. Did Martinez think about pinch-hitting right there?

"I did," the manager said. "But, for me, Murphy was just an emergency guy. I didn't want to put him in the field."

Reynolds, who did reach base twice earlier in the game, grounded out to end the eighth-inning rally. Murphy, meanwhile, did pinch-hit with two outs in the ninth and doubled off closer Seranthony Domínguez, only to be stranded at second when Adam Eaton sent a flyout to right to end the game.

"(Murphy) came up there and he hit a double, which was nice," Martinez said. "It was good. But he was just an emergency guy today. We'll see how he feels tomorrow, but he might not play tomorrow."

The Nationals wound up losing to the second-place Phillies for the fourth time in six games over the last week-plus. And with the Braves cruising in St. Louis, they fell to a season-high five games out of first place in the National League East.

The season now exactly halfway finished, the Nationals are 42-39. Unless they think 84 wins is going to get them into the playoffs, they're going to have to step on the gas pedal sometime soon.

"I definitely think we can play a lot better in the second half, and moving forward," Trea Turner said. "I think winning games like tonight would be huge. One-run ballgames, I feel like we've been on the wrong side of that for a little while now. The margin isn't very big, and I think we had opportunities to score in the last two innings, and that's the difference. If anybody gets a hit in any of those situations, it's a tie game and we go to extras or we end up scoring two runs and we're good."

The Nationals gave themselves early chances at the plate against Phillies starter Vince Velasquez, with four of their first eight batters reaching safely. But only one of those (Wilmer Difo) scored (on Spencer Kieboom's double), making the whole endeavor feel like a wasted opportunity.

Then again, it was Velasquez's truly remarkable play in the top of the second that prevented the Nats from adding on, albeit at a serious price. The right-hander was smoked on his arm near the elbow by an Eaton comebacker with two outs and a man on third, then managed to retrieve the ball and make a perfect throw - left-handed - to get Eaton at first and end the inning before he collapsed to the ground in agony.

Velasquez eventually walked off the field, holding his arm gingerly, and was forced to depart after throwing only 43 pitches. The Phillies later announced his injury as a right forearm contusion, with negative X-rays, which sounded a lot less serious than it looked at the time.

"I've acutally seen him play catch left-handed plenty of times, so it didn't really surprise me he made that play," said Nationals starter Jeremy Hellickson, who pitched for the Phillies the last two seasons. "He's an athlete. That's one of the best plays I've seen. It still sucks to see anybody go down like that, whether he's a friend or somebody you don't know. He hit that ball hard and hopefully he's alright."

Hellickson knows all about abrupt, early departures from starts. Four weeks ago in Atlanta, he pulled up lame trying to cover first base on a groundball to the right side with a hamstring strain that didn't permit him to take a big league mound again until tonight.

There appeared to be some rust. Though he posted back-to-back zeroes to begin his evening, Hellickson needed 46 pitches to do it. And then the Phillies broke through against him for three runs in the third and fourth, with Odúbel Herrera homering and Jesmuel Valentín, Jorge Alfaro and Aaron Altherr delivering back-to-back-to-back doubles (the last one on a drive to left-center that might have been caught had Juan Soto taken a more direct route to the ball).

By the time Hellickson allowed a two-out single to Nick Williams in the bottom of the fifth, he had thrown 98 pitches and faced the top half of Philadelphia's lineup three times. That was enough for manager Davey Martinez, who turned to his bullpen for the remaining 4 1/3 innings.

"It's just tough to take three weeks off and get back out there in a big league game," Hellickson said. "But the good thing is I felt fine. Thought my stuff was good. Just wasn't commanding much."