Falling behind 5-0 on the road usually means you've lost. On Sunday at Target Field, it just meant the Phillies hadn't started hitting yet.
Philadelphia trailed by five after Minnesota starter Dean Kremer cruised through the first five innings and Andrew Painter got hammered, including a grand slam off the bat of Brooks Lee and a third-inning homer from Kody Clemens. That's the kind of hole that ends most road games by the sixth inning. Instead, Alec Bohm decided the score was a suggestion.
Bohm's three-run homer keyed a four-run sixth that got Philadelphia back into it, and he wasn't done. A bloop single in the eighth tied the game at 5-5 before Bryan De La Cruz's two-run single, aided by a ball that snuck past Royce Lewis at first, finished the flip. Bohm finished with four RBI on the day, and he's the single biggest reason the Phillies won 7-5 and swept the series.
This is the version of the Phillies that should worry October opponents. They swept this series without getting anything from Zack Wheeler or Cristopher Sánchez. Aaron Nola and Painter, the two starters who actually took the mound over the weekend, have both carried ERAs north of 5.00 this season. A lineup that can bury a rotation's shortcomings by scoring in bunches doesn't panic when the starting pitching is shaky, and that matters heading into the stretch run.
The flip side of this game is just as telling. Andrew Morris had been one of the most reliable arms in the Twins bullpen for two months, and he's the one who let this game slip in the eighth, allowing all three runs in that inning. One bad outing doesn't erase a good stretch, but it's a brutal example of the collapses that have defined Minnesota's August. The Twins have gone 4-10 this month, they just got swept in a series they'd been competitive in for stretches, and they'd won six straight home series before Philadelphia came to town. That streak is gone now, and so is any margin for error.
This loss doesn't bury the Twins' season, but it confirms the shape of their problem: a team that can hang with anyone for five or six innings and then finds new ways to lose the last three. That's a pattern, and patterns decide seasons in September.
Trea Turner was available Sunday but sat out after fouling a ball off his knee Saturday, a precaution worth watching but nothing to overreact to yet. The bigger story is a lineup that keeps bailing out an unsettled rotation, with Bohm doing the heaviest lifting right now. Orion Kerkering picked up the win with a clean seventh, and Jhoan Duran closed it out for his 26th save. Clean bullpen work behind a comeback bat wins series. Right now, that's the Phillies' formula.
