WASHINGTON — Derek Hill has been with the Philadelphia Phillies for a mere 13 days, so he was probably unaware as he stepped to the plate Wednesday night that his new team has been historically bad in the situation he was facing.Hill bats right-handed. He faced a left-handed pitcher. He had the platoon advantage, something teams covet.Except for these Phillies. At that moment, with two outs in the ninth inning, their righty hitters had batted .197 with a .593 OPS against lefty pitchers. That batting average was the worst for that split, going back to at least 1920. It is why the Phillies made a rare June trade to acquire Hill from the Chicago White Sox; he at least has a modest track record of hitting lefties in his 277 big-league games.Then Hill, the 30-year-old man who hits with a toothpick in his mouth, took a mighty swing. His go-ahead, two-run homer won it.“It’s been a couple of crazy nights here in the ninth for us,” interim Phillies manager Don Mattingly said.
Down to their final strike!
The @Phillies take the lead in the 9th on a Derek Hill pinch-hit homer 😮 pic.twitter.com/91MKEez0pZ
— MLB (@MLB) June 25, 2026That might be an understatement from Mattingly following a 5-4 win over the Washington Nationals that nudged the Phillies (44-36) within 4 1/2 games of the first-place Atlanta Braves in the NL East.The Phillies are the first team since at least 1988 to win consecutive road games after trailing with two outs, nobody on base and two strikes in the ninth inning or later, according to Sportradar. It’s late June, and the Phillies might have higher expectations than Washington. Do two consecutive wins like that mean anything more to a veteran club?“Heck yeah, man,” Aaron Nola said.“You want to ride that momentum, right?” Kyle Schwarber said. “You want to keep feeling good.”The Phillies are feeling themselves right now. They have a better record than everyone but the Milwaukee Brewers since Mattingly became manager. They still have allowed more runs than they’ve scored (only by one now), but they are a season-high eight games over .500. The nightmarish start might define this season because it got the manager fired. However, that is a distant memory at this point.“All wins are important as you build momentum,” Mattingly said. “Especially when you’re able to come from down, it lets your team know that this game is never over. Right? … So I think that’s important for our club to know that we can score a lot. We can score a little. We can score in different ways. So I think these wins are very important, actually.”
