PHILADELPHIA — Going .500 over a six-game homestand to start the season may not seem successful, but for the rebuilding Philadelphia Phillies, it’s a positive in 2015.
With a pair of three-game series against the Boston Red Sox and Washington Nationals — teams with playoff expectations — the Phillies held their own, going 3-3 and nearly sweeping the Nationals.
Philadelphia fell to Washington 4-3 in 10 innings on Sunday at Citizens Bank Park. But when looking at the big picture, Phillies manager Ryne Sandberg was pleased.
“I liked the fight in the guys,” Sandberg said. “We had a chance to win all but Opening Day. That’s a good sign.”
The Phillies were picked by Las Vegas odds makers to finish with the majors’ fewest wins in 2015 at 68.5. The Nationals, favored to win their second straight NL East title, got all they could handle from them.
Philadelphia erased deficits in the seventh and eighth innings to steal the first two games of the series before nearly rallying past Washington on Sunday.
“The guys have fought back to win some games,” Sandberg said. “The energy’s there, the fight’s there, so we’ll just continue to work at it and do little things a little bit better. But to start off the homestand with the guys going about the way they did, leaving 3-3, there’s some satisfaction to that, we can build on that.”