Phillies fight past Mets in 10 innings

NEW YORK - Freddy Galvis was in the dugout, immersed by his joyous teammates. He had scored the go-ahead run in a 6-2 Phillies win until he didn't. The umpire signaled for Galvis to return to third base with two outs in the eighth inning. The shortstop, lauded for his instincts, slammed his helmet on the dugout railing.

He knew his mistake.

"At the moment," Galvis said, "that felt so bad."

But this time, the Phillies outlasted their gaffes because their pitchers silenced a lineup that battered them last week. They won an extra-inning game instead of tasting another bitter defeat. Zach Eflin did enough. The bullpen held.

This game was not the prettiest. The Phillies had a chance to win only because Jose Reyes flubbed a pop-up some 20 feet from home plate. They should have seized a lead in the eighth, but waited until the 10th, when Michael Saunders deftly went from first to third and scored on a Cameron Rupp sacrifice fly.

"It was really good to beat these guys," Phillies manager Pete Mackanin said.

The Mets, who laid waste to Citizens Bank Park last week, scored twice in the first inning. They were scoreless for the next nine. They committed three errors. They looked, well, human.

So did the Phillies. They could only tie the game in the eighth because Galvis did not run hard on the pop-up and Andres Blanco hit a ball that bounced inches above the eight-foot-high orange line, making it a ground-rule double that exposed Galvis' blunder. Galvis, in the 10th, singled in the middle of the Phillies' four-run rally.

Eflin, who returned to the majors after two knee surgeries, could be a permanent part of it if he proves his value. He did what no Phillies starter was able to do last week: He kept the Mets in the park.

"He was outstanding," Rupp said. "A little jitters in the first, but he got back to being himself. He kept the ball down. Ground ball after ground ball after ground ball. He was outstanding."

Seventeen of his first 31 pitches were balls. He walked three Mets, two of whom later scored. It could have been worse. Eflin, 23, avoided an inning that would have crippled the Phillies. The righthander posted zeros for the rest of his night.

Eflin retired 12 of the final 14 batters he faced.

"In the first inning, I was nitpicking stuff," Eflin said. "I was trying to do too much. Up and in, low and away, I just wasn't hitting my spots. So I just stuck to my strengths and attacked with the fastball in the zone."

The challenge, for what is now the second-youngest starting rotation in baseball, is stiff. Only the Colorado Rockies, with an average age of 25 years, 74 days, are a shade younger than the Phillies (25 years, 262 days old), according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

The growing pains will continue. It was the eighth time in 13 games a Phillies starter lasted five innings or less. The Los Angeles Dodgers, who entered Tuesday with nine such outings, were the one team with more.

Eflin was the choice, Mackanin said, because of his experience in the majors a season ago. The Phillies could try various options to fill the fifth spot for the remainder of the season. Each one is a young pitcher. Nick Pivetta, Jake Thompson, and Ben Lively are all on the 40-man roster and in triple-A Lehigh Valley's rotation.

"Fortunately, we have pretty good inventory at triple A," Mackanin said. "So we have some pitchers to choose from. More than I can remember."

Eflin had not pitched more than five innings in his first two minor-league starts. Mackanin said he spoke Tuesday morning with triple-A manager Dusty Wathan, who said he exerted an abundance of caution with Eflin.

The Phillies duplicated that Tuesday, although Mackanin's hand was somewhat forced. Eflin threw 85 pitches in five innings. He was due to hit in the sixth, with two outs and runners on first and second, so Mackanin summoned his bench.

"We're going to take care of him," Mackanin said of Eflin. "There's no need to rush him."