Phillies outslug and outlast Braves on long, rainy night to stay in striking distance in wild-card race

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The Phillies earned a split with the Braves by outlasting them 9-5 on a rainy night that featured plenty of home runs and pitching changes.

The Phillies homered four times, the Braves homered three times and 12 of the 14 combined runs scored via the homer.

Eleven relievers were used. It was a long, slow September game.

Cesar Hernandez, Jean Segura, Adam Haseley and J.T. Realmuto each homered and drove in two runs. 

Hernandez led off the game with a homer for the 10th time in his career.

Segura hit his 12th of the season, tied for the second-most of his career.

Haseley again went deep to one of the deeper parts of the park. He has five home runs — two to center, two to right-center and one to left-center.

Sean Rodriguez, still getting booed, provided a big insurance run with a one-out RBI double in the ninth inning. Realmuto followed two batters later with his 25th home run to give the Phils a four-run cushion.

Hector Neris recorded four outs for his 26th save. He has allowed one earned run in his last 22⅔ innings.

The win made the Phillies 76-70.

Updated wild-card standings

The Cubs, Brewers and Mets all won Thursday afternoon. The Phillies remain two games behind Chicago and Milwaukee for the second wild-card spot and are tied with the Mets.

More on each team's upcoming schedule here.

Short starts

Both starting pitchers lasted only four innings. The Phillies homered three times off Julio Teheran and the Braves homered twice off Drew Smyly.

There was a ton of loud contact allowed by both pitchers — beyond the homers there were balls crushed foul, squared-up pitches fouled straight back and well-struck balls in play.

Smyly struck out six. He allowed a pair of runs in the first and fourth. One was unearned because of Rhys Hoskins' error catching a throw from Maikel Franco to begin the game.

In 10 starts with the Phillies, Smyly is 3-1 with a 4.14 ERA and 1.29 WHIP, respectable numbers for a back-end starting pitcher.

5 important outs

Jared Hughes came into the game in the fifth inning and kept the Braves off-balance with his sinker. Facing the top and middle of Atlanta's order, Hughes pitched 1⅔ hitless innings, walked two and struck out two. He retired all three of Ronald Acuña Jr., Freddie Freeman and Josh Donaldson, no easy task.

The big right-hander helped the Phillies settle the game down in the middle innings.

Up next

The Phillies have the extremely rare Friday off. Typically, the only time they've ever been off on a Friday is when the season opens on a Thursday and they're off the next day.

After that is a two-game series against the Red Sox, who are all but eliminated from the playoffs. The Red Sox were 10 games back in the wild-card race when their game began Thursday night.

Pitching matchups for the series:

Saturday night at 7:10 — Aaron Nola (12-5, 3.70) vs. LHP Eduardo Rodriguez (17-6, 3.73)

Sunday afternoon at 1:10 — LHP Jason Vargas (6-7, 4.31) vs. Rick Porcello (12-12, 5.83)

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