PHILADELPHIA -- Phillies rookie Andrew Painter had a bad Sunday morning.
A few hours later, the Phils’ baserunners had it even worse.
“Yeah, just bad baseball,” Bryce Harper said.
Painter woke up with a migraine, which he has experienced since travel ball as a kid. It wasn’t an ocular migraine in which he loses vision, but he still threw up a few times. Painter, ranked the Phillies' No. 2 prospect, took medicine at home to try to ease the pain. Three hours before a scheduled 1:35 p.m. first pitch at Citizens Bank Park, he sat in a chair in front of his locker with a hood pulled over his head and wired earphones in his ears as teammates chatted, putted on the nearby putting green and walked to the batting cage and field for pregame work. He was feeling better.
But he wasn’t feeling good enough. About 45 minutes before the Phillies’ ugly 4-3 loss to the Diamondbacks, the Phillies scratched Painter from his start. Phillies right-handed reliever Zach Pop would start instead.
Pop fared well. He allowed one run in two innings.
Painter started the third inning -- he felt good enough to long toss before the game and sit in the bullpen -- and allowed three hits, one run and one walk and struck out seven in five innings.
“I wasn’t going to go out if I didn’t feel good,” Painter said. “Especially for the bullpen, I wanted to eat some innings for these guys. I know it’s a tough thing when you come out here and a starter doesn’t make a start they’re expected to.”
Painter left with a 3-2 lead. The Phillies’ bullpen blew it in the eighth, but the offense had an excellent chance to tie or take the lead in the bottom of the inning.
Harper walked and Brandon Marsh singled to put runners at the corners with no outs. Bryson Stott struck out swinging on a 1-2 slider barely off the plate for the first.
Marsh then took off for second on a 3-1 pitch to Adolis Garcia, who popped up the ball on the infield to Diamondbacks second baseman Ketel Marte.
“I haven’t looked at the tape, but on your third step you should peek [at the batter],” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said about Marsh.
But Marsh never peeked, so he kept running.
If he had looked, he might have been able to stop and return to first. Instead, he reached second base. Then, when he realized the ball hadn’t left the infield, he hesitated, touched second base again and then tried to return to first. But Marsh had no chance. The Diamondbacks had a gift-wrapped, easy inning-ending double play.
“We had an opportunity right there and didn’t do anything to come through in that situation,” Harper said.
“He lost the ball,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said. “A 3-1 count, they were giving us second base. They were also at double-play depth so if the ball’s on the ground, we score and tie the game. It’s what it is.”
Marsh was unavailable to comment.
Harper made his own baserunning mistake in the fourth inning when he hit a groundball single to center field. He tried to stretch the hit into a double, but Arizona center fielder Alek Thomas threw him out by a few feet.
“Yeah, I mean, I feel like every ball … most balls I hit in that spot, I try to get there,” Harper said. “I thought it was a good point in the game. Haven’t really had anything going the whole day. Made a good throw and got me in that situation.”
The Phillies took a 3-2 lead in the sixth inning when Trea Turner hit a two-run home run and Kyle Schwarber and Harper hit back-to-back doubles. Marsh followed with a single to put runners at the corners with no outs.
But in a preview of the eighth, the Phillies could not score another run.
Turner, like his teammates, thinks the runs will score eventually.
“I think our lineup is great,” he said. “We’ve got great players up and down. And sometimes, I'm guilty of this too, you're just trying too hard. It’s kind of a freebie. All you have to do is hit a fly ball to center field or move a guy over. Sometimes it doesn't happen, and it's really obvious. You know, looking back at the situations that could change the game, we understand them, and we know what we're trying to do, but it doesn't always happen. I think that's just the difference in some of these wins and losses lately.”