PHOENIX -- The Phillies closed July having lost four straight games and four straight series, but they opened August with four straight wins and never looked back.
With a 2-1 victory over the D-backs in Monday’s series opener, the Phillies closed August at 21-7, tied for the 10th-best month by winning percentage in club history. They’ve swept four of their last five series and are riding a five-game heater.
Bryson Stott lit the fuse in this one with a Statcast-projected 464-foot solo shot in the second inning, the longest home run of his career by a wide margin. His longest this season was 412 feet on May 3 in Miami, and his previous career long was 441 feet on Sept. 24, 2025, against the Marlins in Philly.
Stott has played a big role in the Phillies’ surge. He hit .284 with an .820 OPS and 11 RBIs for the month, all while playing Gold Glove-caliber third base, a position he switched to following second baseman Luis Arraez’s arrival at the Trade Deadline.
The Phillies’ second run came courtesy of another August hero: Bryce Harper. Harper made it a 2-0 game with an RBI double off the center-field wall in the third inning, extending his on-base streak to 33 games.
Harper finished August with a slash line of .333/.496/.573 (1.069 OPS). The .496 on-base percentage is the highest by a Phillies hitter in a month (min. 100 PA) since Ryan Howard posted a .561 OBP in September 2006.
On the mound, Aaron Nola continued to turn around his season with five solid innings. He held the D-backs to one run on five hits with four strikeouts in five-plus innings, lowering his ERA (4.93) below 5.00 for the first time since April 19. The mark had ballooned to 6.04 after a rough June, but a 2.50 mark over his last seven starts has Nola looking much more like a pitcher the club can rely on come October.
Nola’s night nearly ended much differently, however. He gave up a single and a walk to open the sixth inning and was pulled without recording an out, but right-hander Alex McFarlane came on and retired three straight Diamondbacks to keep it a 2-1 game.
The Phillies’ hot streak comes at a consequential time, as Monday’s win allowed them to remain tied with the Cubs for the top NL Wild Card spot. They also gained a game on Atlanta in the NL East and sit four games back with 24 to play, including three-game sets against the Braves over the next two weekends.
But before they turn their attention to that first showdown on Friday at Citizens Bank Park, the Phillies have a series to finish in Arizona that has playoff implications of its own. The D-backs sit a half-game out of the playoff picture, five games behind the Phils and Cubs, with the Padres sitting just ahead of them in the third spot.
While manager Don Mattingly and Co. are certainly happy to have put together such an impressive August, they aren’t letting the arbitrary flip of the calendar distract them from their task at hand.
“I think we have to win games and then we move on and try to win another game. Simple as that,” Mattingly said. “You can't look past anybody.
“We have a rough schedule down the stretch, so I think [the mindset] is just: Win every day. I think that's the mode. It's what it should be. It's that time of year. It's the way you want to be. It's a day-to-day business at this point. … You can't worry about tomorrow.”