Things haven’t been going too well for the Philadelphia Phillies lately. They have been playing worse than .400 baseball since the All-Star break and have watched their lead in the National League get whittled down to nothing.
They still have a 7.0-game lead in the NL East with just a little more than five weeks to go in the season. Their arch-rival, the Atlanta Braves, all battered and bruised from the ridiculous number of injuries they have suffered this season, took the first game of their current three-game series easily by a score of 3-1.
Whit Merrifield's comments add insult to injury but Phillies get last laugh on game-winning out
Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse, in Tuesday's series opener Whit Merrifield, of all people, shoved it back in the Phillies' face with a productive evening against his former club. He went 2-for-3 with a triple, a double, a walk and one run scored while batting at the bottom of the Braves lineup.
To add insult to injury, Merrifield added an innocent, yet snarky jab at his former club with his postgame comments, per MLB.com's Todd Zolecki
“You play the best you can every night, and a lot of times, it’s not your night,” Merrifield said, per Zolecki. “But to contribute and play well against the team that told you that you weren’t good enough to play for them, it feels good. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t. I have no hard feelings over there at all. I truly don’t. It just didn’t work out. It just didn’t seem like it was meant to be.”
Ouch! That’s gotta hurt a bit for the Phillies. They were already hurt when Merrifield failed to produce for the team after being one of their key offseason signings. In 53 games, he struggled to a .199 average and .572 OPS with just three home runs and 11 RBI, as he failed to find his groove throughout his tenure in Philadelphia.
The good news is the Phillies won Wednesday's game, 3-2, to even the series and found a way to stop Merrifield. He went 1-for-4 with a single and a walk but grounded out to Bryce Harper at first to end the game with runners on second and third.
Gritty play to secure a gritty win@SEIInvestments x #RingTheBell pic.twitter.com/GD2TxsYjmH
— Philadelphia Phillies (@Phillies) August 22, 2024
Merrifield has been enjoying his time with the Braves, compiling a .258 average and a .790 OPS with 13 runs scored, two doubles, two triples, one home run, two RBI and five stolen bases in 21 games. The absolute last thing that the Phillies need now is for one of their castoffs to come back and bite them in the worst possible way.
As much as it was a tough pill to swallow for the Phillies both back then and right now, Harper, for one, actually felt Merrfield's performance on Tuesday was going to come all along.
“Yeah, he’ll probably get nine hits this series,” Harper said after Tuesday's loss, per Zolecki. “It’s just how baseball kind of works.”
Merrifield has been on base five times in nine plate appearances through the first two games of this series. Now the Phillies just have to shut him down one more time and try to leave Atlanta with a series win on Thursday.