ST. LOUIS \u2013 With a tired bullpen and a need to string together some wins, Phillies manager Don Mattingly was looking for one thing from starting pitcher Andrew Painter on Monday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need a good one,\u201d he said before the game.<\/p>\n
Painter delivered.<\/p>\n
In his third start since returning from Triple A, the 23-year-old right-hander carried a no-hitter into the sixth inning to help the Phillies beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 6-5, at Busch Stadium.<\/p>\n
Pitching with a 3-0 lead, Painter retired the first batter in the sixth before allowing a walk, a double and a two-run single as the Cardinals made it a one-run game. Painter exited at 93 pitches and Alan Rangel got the final two outs of the inning to preserve the lead.<\/p>\n
Painter (2-8) earned his second big-league win and first since his debut on March 31. It was the first time since May 18 that the Phillies won a game started by someone other than Zack Wheeler, Cristopher Sanchez, Jesus Luzardo or Aaron Nola.<\/p>\n
With the win, the Phillies maintained their hold on the final NL wild-card spot by a game over San Diego. The Phils have 42 games remaining.<\/p>\n
Painter struck out six and walked three.<\/p>\n
Rangel, the right-hander who has yo-yoed between Triple A and the majors this season, played a huge role in the win.<\/p>\n
He got eight outs after Painter left the game, a huge contribution with a large chunk of the bullpen unavailable because of recent workload.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew it before the game,\u201d Mattingly said. \u201cWe talked about it. It was exactly how we scripted it as far as we needed eight innings from those two guys. Painter was great and Rangel was really gutsy in that eighth inning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thanks to Kyle Schwarber’s RBI double in the seventh and\u00a0Edmundo Sosa’s two-run\u00a0double in the\u00a0top of the eighth, Rangel carried a 6-2 lead into the bottom of the eighth. The Cardinals got to him for five hits and three runs to make it a one-run game, but the right-hander stranded runners on second and third to get out of the inning with the lead.<\/p>\n
As the Cardinals poured it on and Rangel teetered in the eighth, no one got up to throw in the Phillies\u2019 bullpen.<\/p>\n
Frankly, the Phils looked helpless because of their shorthanded bullpen.<\/p>\n
\u201cA little, I guess,\u201d Mattingly said when asked if he felt helpless. \u201cBut at that point, you don\u2019t have options. You just have to live with it. It was one of the easiest games I\u2019ve ever managed because you know you\u2019re not doing anything.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had one bullet out there, (Jonathan) Bowlan, that we were willing to use. You can use guys, but you\u2019d hurt guys. It was a huge win for us knowing where we were with the \u2018pen. To get that from Painter and Alan was huge.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bowlan \u2013 the Phillies\u2019 one bullet in the bullpen \u2013 notched his first big-league save with a quick ninth inning. The likable, 29-year-old right-hander was a little emotional after the game. He grew up a Cardinals fan in the Memphis area, not far from the longtime home of the Cards\u2019 Triple A team. His dad, Mark, pitched in the Cardinals\u2019 minor-league system. A large contingent of his family and friends were at the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a very special night,\u201d Bowlan said. \u201cTo get my first save with my family here was very special.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mattingly was so committed to getting the bullpen some rest, he said he would have gone to catcher Garrett Stubbs if the game had gone into extra innings. Bowlan prevented that.<\/p>\n
Bowlan couldn\u2019t say enough about the job the rookie tandem of Painter and Rangel did.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey competed their tails off,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Since coming back from Triple A, Painter has pitched 15 1\/3 innings and allowed just five runs. He\u2019s kept the team in games, just what a No. 5 starter needs to do.<\/p>\n
Painter has ditched his splitter and gone to a circle change. He used the pitch effectively Monday night and got three strikeouts with it. His four-seam fastball hit 98.1 mph.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was something the team needed,\u201d Mattingly said. \u201cIt was good for him and our club.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Phillies\u2019 bullpen is still fatigued. Even after so many guys got a break Monday night, Mattingly said it was not a full reset. It would help if Sanchez could go deep in the game Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re closer to where we need to be,\u201d Mattingly said. \u201cWe\u2019ll see (Tuesday) where we\u2019re at. We had a couple guys that needed two days, but we\u2019ll have a few more available (Tuesday). Still not a full boat, but we\u2019ll have a few more guys.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. LOUIS \u2013 With a tired bullpen and a need to string together some wins, Phillies manager Don…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263083,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70,11350],"class_list":["post-263082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-phillies-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}