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What we learned as Harper caps Phillies' comeback trilogy, nostalgic first half originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

WASHINGTON — The Phillies reached the season’s halfway point Thursday with a familiar feel.

Four years ago, another Phillies club ended its first half against Washington after climbing out of an early hole, undergoing a managerial change and beginning a run that carried it to a National League pennant.

That 2022 team concluded the first 81 games at 43-38.

This one left Nationals Park at 45-36.

The similarities only grew after the Phillies erased a five-run deficit to beat Washington, 10-5, completing a three-game comeback trilogy that kept topping itself.

They scored two runs in the sixth, three in the seventh and four in the ninth. Bryce Harper, channeling his inner “Showman,” hit a go-ahead two-run homer in the ninth to cap their third straight comeback win and a wild series against the Nationals.

They became the first team in MLB history to hit go-ahead homers in three consecutive games, and scored the most ninth-inning runs in a three game span of any Phillies team ever.

Absurd.

The Phillies were 9-19 less than two months ago. They have gone 36-17 since, moving within four games of first place in the National League East as Atlanta has lost 10 of its last 13.

Thursday did not look like it would extend the run.

Cristopher Sánchez, of all pitchers, allowed five runs over the first three innings. The Phillies had struggled to get anything going against Nationals starter Cade Cavalli.

Then Brandon Marsh got a pitch to drive.

CHIP AWAY, CHIP AWAY

It felt fitting that Marsh broke the Phillies’ scoreless seal.

After Harper singled with one out in the sixth, Marsh jumped on a low-and-in changeup from Cavalli and drove it into the right-field seats for a two-run homer.

It was Marsh’s eighth hit of the series, fourth extra-base hit and third homer.

Earlier Thursday, Marsh was named a National League All-Star finalist after Phase 1 voting ended. This series offered another reminder of what has fueled his breakout season.

“I got some pitches to do some damage with and take advantage of in this series,” Marsh said. “It’s not gonna always be like that, so you definitely got to take it when you get it.”

The Phillies were still down three entering the seventh.

Justin Crawford began the inning with his second hit of the day, only his sixth hit this season against a left-hander. Trea Turner followed with a single, extending his streak to three straight multihit games.

Then the Phillies changed the inning without putting a ball in play.

Kyle Schwarber walked. Harper and Marsh each drew bases-loaded walks after Clayton Beeter entered.

Suddenly, it was 5-4.

Alec Bohm tied the game by beating out a potential inning-ending double play. Bryson Stott worked another walk. J.T. Realmuto grounded out to end the inning despite Curtis Mead hesitating on his throw after the Phillies’ catcher stumbled on his way down the line.

Mattingly said the inning started with an effort to get traffic on the bases before Schwarber and Harper came up.

“We were very patient there in the seventh,” Mattingly said. “We wanted to get some action before Schwarber and Harp got up. Crawford gets a hit, Trea gets a hit, then you’re in the zone. Schwarber walks, Harper walks and it kind of snowballed.”

The Phillies entered the inning with little momentum. They left it with another chance.

A RARE ROUGH DAY FOR SÁNCHEZ

Sánchez’s scoreless streak reached 50 2/3 innings earlier this season. Since it ended, he has posted a 4.98 ERA over four starts and allowed at least four runs twice.

His command was not as sharp as usual Thursday.

Curtis Mead opened the scoring with a first-inning homer off a sinker that leaked back over the plate. Sánchez then hit Andrés Chaparro before allowing consecutive singles to Dylan Crews and Daylen Lile. Jacob Young brought home another run with a soft chopper, and Nasim Nuñez added a two-out RBI single.

Sánchez relied on his slider 28 percent of the time, his second-highest usage of the pitch this season. He allowed five earned runs in five innings with one walk and six strikeouts, raising his ERA to 2.13.

He stayed in long enough to cover five innings after the rough start.

“He hangs in there and gets us through five,” Mattingly said. “He kind of got better as the game went along. His pitch count just got a little deep for us.”

Sánchez did not view the outing as a physical issue.

“I missed a couple pitches and they got me,” Sánchez said. “Outside of that, I felt great today. Everything was good.”

His teammates gave him a different ending than the one he expected after the third inning.

“It motivates us a lot,” Sánchez said. “After a rough start like today, them picking me up like that, that’s motivating.”

THE STAGE WAS SET FOR BRYCE

The Phillies had already climbed back from five-plus runs Tuesday.

They had been down to their final strike Wednesday before Derek Hill’s go-ahead homer.

On Thursday, after the seventh-inning rally tied the game, Harper came to the plate in the ninth with a chance to finish it.

The right-field upper deck had spent much of the night chanting at the former National.

Harper heard it. With “eff you” chants raining down from the ‘tarps-off’ group, he sat on a 1-0 changeup and drove it the other way for a go-ahead two-run homer.

He gestured toward the crowd as he rounded the bases, later clarifying it was his ring finger. He knows this place quite well.

“It’s a fan base I sweated for, for seven years,” Harper said. “There’s a lot of people over there within that organization I respect, a lot of workers around the ballpark, and I still love them.

“But it’s all part of it. It’s all fun.”

The crowd noise has never kept Harper from leaning into a moment.

“I love it,” Harper said.

Mattingly sees those environments as a natural fit for Harper.

“He’s not afraid of the stage,” Mattingly said. “He’s been in it his whole life. I don’t think the stage bothers him. I think it probably motivates him when people get on him and stuff like that. I think it’s probably something he feeds off of a little bit.”

Harper’s homer gave the Phillies their first lead of the afternoon. Realmuto followed with a double off the wall, then Hill added another home run, giving the Phillies breathing room and allowing Mattingly to stay away from Jhoan Duran.

Harper placed the game-winning swing within the full rally that came before it.

“Once you get down 5-0, it’s definitely tough,” Harper said. “But we just got to keep fighting and going back, and we’ve done that.

Three nights. Three comeback wins. Three different players delivering go-ahead homers.

THE ’22 FEEL

The 2022 comparison remains imperfect. Harper said this group is different from the one that went to the World Series.

But the setting, record and timing are hard to ignore.

Bohm was part of that 2022 turnaround. Thursday left him looking at a club in a far better place from the early stages of the season.

“We’re definitely in a lot better spot than we could be, given how we started,” Bohm said. “This is what we knew we were capable of.”

The three games in Washington reflected the larger turnaround, with contributions coming from everywhere.

“It’s kind of the same thing you see in these last three games,” Bohm said. “We’re down five, we’re down three, we’re down two, whatever it is late in the game, and we string something together. It’s the whole roster, guys coming off the bench, shoving down the lineup. It’s everybody chipping in.”

The Phillies did not coast into the second half.

They fought their way there, and now, they could be the most battle tested group in the sport.

“You can’t just flip the switch in this game,” Bohm said. “I think this group’s shown that we can do it. We’ve definitely fought back from a pretty good hole we dug ourselves into, and I think we can draw on that when it comes down to later in the year.”

Shortly after getting swept in a doubleheader by the Chicago Cubs on Wednesday, the Mets traded David Peterson to the Cubs, sending the left-hander to the visitor’s locker room for minor league prospect Cole Mathis.

Manager Carlos Mendoza spoke about the trade before the series finale between the two teams on Thursday and was sad to see Peterson, who was in his seventh season playing for New York, go.

“It’s a tough one because obviously you understand this is a business, but, especially from my end, I had a really good relationship with Petey,” Mendoza said. “This is a guy that will come in the office and have coffee and just talk about life. We’ve been together since I took the job [in 2024] and we’ve been through the ups and downs.”

Mendoza’s introduction to Peterson in the skipper’s first year on the job happened while the left-hander was rehabbing from hip surgery which caused him to miss the beginning of the season.

When he recovered, though, Peterson became one of the best pitchers on the Mets and was instrumental in their surprise playoff berth and again during their run in the postseason that saw New York reach the NLCS.

In 21 starts that season, Peterson went 10-3 with a 2.90 ERA to go along with a 2.92 ERA and a save in five games (one start) during the playoffs.

The southpaw returned the following season and kept up his brilliant pitching in the first half. For his efforts, Peterson was named to his first All-Star selection and was on his way to becoming a front-line starter for the Mets.

Unfortunately, the 30-year-old’s second half was not nearly as good and played a part in New York’s collapse of not making the playoffs. 

However, determined to revert back to his All-Star potential and the Mets believing he was capable of that, Peterson began his 2026 campaign with 5.1 scoreless innings against the Pittsburgh Pirates. But after that, things quickly went downhill for the lefty, who eventually lost his spot in the starting rotation and was used as the long man coming out of the bullpen.

Injuries to the staff and better results as a reliever helped get Peterson back in the rotation, but after his latest clunker against the Philadelphia Phillies rose his ERA as a starter this year to 7.71, it became clear to New York that he no longer had a role with the team, especially because fellow struggling starter Kodai Senga has already been moved to the bullpen.

“I’ve seen him have success, make the All-Star team,” Mendoza said. “I’ve seen him struggle a lot and how he handles it, but it got to a point where we needed the flexibility on the roster. 

“Talking to David [Stearns], we already have Kodai on the pen and just continuing to have starters in the bullpen, it’s just not gonna be sustainable so there was an opportunity to make a deal and we’ll move forward.”

Despite the unsatisfactory results, Mendoza praised Peterson’s willingness to do whatever was asked of him this season with no complaints and said he represented the team “in a quality way” on and off the field.

“He’s a professional and he’s always willing to do whatever the team needed,” Mendoza said. “Whether it was as a bullpen guy, as a piggyback, as a starter, he’s done everything for us.”

The skipper was then asked why the Mets were unable to get Peterson back to the version of himself that became an All-Star and Mendoza said the failure is on him and that it’s something he’s always thinking about regarding any struggling player.

“It’s a question that we’re always asking ourselves when players are not performing at their best,” Mendoza said. “In Petey’s case he was an All-Star last year and then kinda everything went the other way. Credit to coaches that were here last year that put everything to continue to help him [and] this year’s coaching staff, but it just didn’t work for some reason.”

Major League Baseball continued its pattern of radical proposals in collective bargaining, proposing a five-year limit on free agent contracts and eliminating contract deferrals, an offer the MLB Players' Association quickly derided as "misleading" and would "eliminate the free market."

The proposals come within the context of a $245.3 million salary cap MLB laid out in a previous proposal, and the cap remains the most explosive point of contention between management and labor. MLB first sought a salary cap in CBA negotiations in 1994, a year that ended with the cancellation of the World Series as the work stoppage dragged into the following year.

The current CBA expires Dec. 1, and MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has strongly suggested the league will lock out the players, as it did in December 2021 during the last major round of bargaining.

The five-year contract length - it would be six years for players returning to their current team - severely limits the earning power of players in the prime of their career. New York Mets slugger Juan Soto is the game's highest-paid player, signing a 15-year, $765 million contract after the 2024 season.

Another previous proposal barred players younger than 20 from the draft, and international players younger than 18 from signing with a club; they can currently sign at 16. Both proposals would significantly delay free agency for young players, especially elite talents such as Soto and Bryce Harper, who each debuted at 19.

MLB's most recent proposal did throw the union a pair of crumbs it has previously requested - the elimination of the qualifying offer for free agents and free agency for players 30 years and older once they reach five years service time; it's currently six years for all players.

Yet those concessions pale compared to the cap on both salaries and contract length, which would cost players billions of dollars over time.

"After making a series of proposals to reduce player compensation by billions of dollars, eliminate fundamental rights with a salary cap, and destroy the amateur entry process, Major League Baseball and team owners are now attempting to distract from the true impact their plan would have on baseball," the MLBPA said in a statement. "These misleading offers are designed to look like ‘improvements’ but are of little or no value, given they are expressly conditioned on agreement to the league’s cap system which eliminates the free market, and ensures gains for one player only come at the expense of another.

"The league also introduced a litany of additional restrictions on player rights – limiting salaries, contract length, performance, award, and signing bonuses. While MLB claims to be acting in the interest of fans, their proposals thus far are entirely consistent with owners’ long-held goals: suppressing player salaries and maximizing club profits."

If you purchased a ticket to this game months ago, my condolences. Red Sox vs. Yankees is supposed to resemble a clash of titans, but instead, the Red Sox have been such an embarrassment they’ve fallen through the cellar floor and might as well be in a different hemisphere than New York (15.5 games back and the season’s not even halfway over yet).

You’ll get no Aaron Judge, no Roman Anthony, and probably no competitive game if it goes anything like the first few starts for Cam Schlittler against the Red Sox. It’s too bad too because normally a four game set between these two teams at this point in the calendar would be box office material and generate major fireworks. But now the biggest piece of drama is if the Red Sox will fail as badly as they did the last time the Yankees were here, which was such a disastrous, listless effort it got Alex Cora and most of the coaching staff fired a few days later in Baltimore.

If you’re looking for a shred of positivity (not that this team deserves any), Connelly Early will get a chance to back up his effectively wild outing last time on the bump in Seattle. It would also be a nice little revenge game personally for Early, who lost both the Game 3 Wild Card series to the Yankees last fall and his start at Fenway against them in April.

In any case, volcanos are much less interesting when they’re dormant; so please bring the rivalry back soon baseball gods. I miss it!

⚾️ First Pitch: 7:10pm — Fenway Park, Boston, MA

📺 TV: NESN

📻 Radio: WEEI

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Baseball and manga fans are about to be united in the City of Angels.

On Thursday, July 2, the Los Angeles Dodgers are hosting their second “One Piece” night at Dodger Stadium.

For the uninitiated, “One Piece” is a popular Japanese manga turned anime turned live-action Netflix series has been around since summer ’97 and follows a young pirate named Monkey D. Luffy who has the ability to expand like rubber once he’s consumed a magical Devil Fruit.

Last summer, the defending World Series champion put on a “One Piece” night with a giveaway where fans were gifted straw hats and Monkey D. Luffy promo cards — where he’s at bat wearing a Dodgers jersey and taking a swing at a straw hat — that are now being flipped on the re-sale market for anywhere from $1,000 to $19,000 depending on the card’s grading.

This time around, the first 40,000 fans will be given straw hats and an exclusive, limited edition “One Piece” trading card. Photo ops, activations, and a post-game “One Piece” drone show are being offered as well.

In early June, The Post wrote “the Dodgers have already unveiled a redesigned hat featuring a chin strap…Fans have begun discussing resale values online despite the organization not yet confirming a card giveaway.”

If you’d like to be there, last-minute tickets are still available for the high-demand game (where Shohei Ohtani’s Dodgers will be taking on Manny Machado’s San Diego Padres by the way).

At the time of publication, the lowest price we could find on seats was $289 including fees on SeatGeek.

Field-level seats start at $634 including fees.

Make sure to use promo code NYPOST10 for $10 off purchases over $250 at checkout (Editor’s Note: this discount is only valid for users’ first purchase on SeatGeek).

Other notable giveaways this season include a Freddie Freeman bobblehead (July 6), Shohei Ohtani bobblehead (July 8) and 2025 World Series mystery rings (July 28).

For more information, our team has everything you need to know and more about the Los Angeles Dodgers’ 2026 “One Piece” giveaway night below.

What do tickets cost for “One Piece” night at Dodger Stadium?

A complete breakdown of all the best prices on tickets by section at Dodger Stadium for “One Piece” night are listed here.

What are the other Dodgers giveaways in 2026?

All Dodgers giveaway home game dates, opponents, freebies and links to buy tickets can be found here:

According to MLB.com, Giveaways are limited to 40,000 units, unless otherwise noted. Only one giveaway item, per person, per valid ticket upon entering the stadium.

Los Angeles Dodgers full 2026 home schedule

Fans that plan on seeing Ohtani, Freeman, Mookie and the squad regardless of whether or not there are giveaways can catch the 2024 and ’25 World Series champs at home all spring and summer long.

Want to be there?

Tickets for all 2026 Los Angeles Dodgers home games at Dodger Stadium from June all the way through September can be grabbed here.

2026 Dodger Stadium special events

At the time of publication, there are 16 Chavez Ravine special event nights scheduled this spring and summer. You’ll find everything you need to know about each of them below.

Huge 2026 Los Angeles concerts

Hoping to catch a concert or three this year, too?

You’re in the right place.

Our team tracked down just five of the most exciting shows headed to the City of Angels these next few months.

• Mamamoo (Aug. 25)

• BTS (Sept. 1-2, 5-6)

• Le Sserafim (Sept. 16)

• aespa (Oct. 3)

• KATSEYE (Nov. 21-22)

Don’t forget KCON is coming to the Crypto.com Arena from Aug. 14-16, too. We’ll see ya there.

Why you should trust ‘Post Wanted’ by the New York Post

This article was written by Matt Levy, New York Post live events reporter. Levy stays up-to-date on all the latest tour announcements from your favorite musical artists and comedians, as well as Broadway openings, sporting events and more live shows – and finds great ticket prices online. Since he started his tenure at the Post in 2022, Levy has reviewed a Bruce Springsteen concert and interviewed Melissa Villaseñor of SNL fame, to name a few. Please note that deals can expire, and all prices are subject to change.

In a year of anniversarial festivity across the United States, a less rounded celebration will make its annual occurrence in just a month and change. The 105th anniversary of the first radio broadcast of a baseball game will occur on August 5th. That initial voyage on the airwaves was appropriately undertaken by MLB’s most ancient seafarers, the Pittsburgh Pirates, taking on their intrastate rivals in Philadelphia.

That 1921 afternoon at Forbes Field was broadcast on KDKA, the first licensed radio station in the United States. Harold Arlin, holding a converted telephone in a box seat converted to little more than the sort of station basketball broadcasters tend to utilize courtside, made history just three miles from where the Seattle Mariners took on those same Pirates today at PNC Park. Still broadcast on KDKA over a century later, fans heard, saw, and otherwise were treated to a 5-1 Pirates win that swept aside their maritime counterparts in a broadcast that Seattle’s television crew struggled to capture due to numerous technical difficulties.

It was for the best. And, with a tinny quality likely reminiscent of Arlin’s original broadcast, Aaron Goldsmith and Angie Mentink made the most of the limitations for one of their best duo shows of the year. It was just as well, because the club’s offensive performance was not so much Transatlantic as Goldsmith’s accent drifted for a delightful moment, but subaquatic.

The Mariners stretched their three-or-fewer runs scored streak to two full weeks on Thursday, though not without some fight. Against Pittsburgh rookie righty Bubba Chandler who sits 98-99 on his heater, the 23 year old worked around five hits, three walks, and a lot of hard contact to stymie Seattle repeatedly. A bases-loaded opportunity came for Seattle in the fourth frame, with Julio Rodríguez singling and seeing the bases loaded behind him by a Josh Naylor hit and, following a dicey stolen base attempt that Julio managed to make work, a Luke Raley walk.

Cole Young rapped a 100 mph heater nearly exactly as hard right back into the left center gap, only to see it swallowed up by a slick sliding catch from Jake Mangum.

Though Seattle had chipped away at the lead built by Pittsburgh’s set of homers off otherwise-sharp Bryce Miller, the 3-1 lead would have been enough even before Alex Hoppe once again fluffed the final total, concluding at a tasteful-but-rigid 5-1.

Most of the day, as has been a common refrain, Seattle could not produce with runners in scoring position. An eternal complaint nearly every season for all 30 teams, it is actually accurate in many ways to highlight the M’s shortcomings w/RISP this year. They entered the day with the third-worst batting average (.226) and fourth-fewest RBI (212) with runners in scoring position. The RBI are descriptive of circumstance here, not intended predictively, but merely to highlight that the M’s have around 30 fewer runs than the average club does to this point generated in RISP situations. That’s not the whole story, of course, as the M’s actually have a 10th-best in MLB wRC+ of 105 w/RISP, and a middle-of-the-pack .315 weighted on-base average (wOBA). If you’re putting two-and-two together there, the M’s walk lots with runners on, but their .254 BABIP is worst in MLB, compounded by having the fourth-fewest total RISP opportunities of any club.

1-10 on the day in their RISPportunities, Seattle loaded the bags again with two outs in the top of the 6th, this time for Colt Emerson against lefty reliever Evan Sisk. Emerson emulated the dream of every Little League Coach and baseball fan reared on 70s and 80s slap and dash baseball. He took the ball right back up the middle, blistering a low line drive on a single hop, at 104 mph just for good measure.

Obviously, an easy out. The ball was hit at almost the exact same just-oppo trajectory as Young’s lineout, in fact. And that is at least part of the issue.

Seattle spent the past two games pulling the ball less than any other club in MLB in that time, and spent all afternoon continuing that trend. Sprayed contact can commonly drop or catch defenses out of position, but it is physically impossible to hit a ball as authoritatively the other way as it is to pull it. That’s why home runs are pulled far more than not, and home runs are better than singles, and way better than outs. It’s crucial to highlight here that Seattle isn’t purely to blame for this. Pittsburgh’s pitching staff threw 40 of the 41 hardest pitches of the game, all from 98.4 to 101.4 mph, including 13 pitches over 100 mph, 12 of which were by the starting pitcher Chandler.

It’s not easy to pull this caliber of stuff in the air, but it does hurt your chances of scoring in bunches. And for Seattle, whose roster is especially home run dependent particularly without Brendan Donovan and Dominic Canzone in the lineup, it’s not great to be in a spot of such power outage.

The final threat came in the top of the 7th, with an all-too-familiar frustration. Cal, Naylor, and Randy Arozarena walked off Sisk and old friend Yohan Ramírez, setting the stage for another relief appearance by flamethrowing southpaw Mason Montgomery. Pushed to a key moment in the game with a lefty on the hill, Dan Wilson went to Rob Refsnyder to relieve Luke Raley. Montgomery is a more ferocious lefty than Sisk, who Raley had been allowed to face earlier and managed a single, but it’s hard not to manage more than utter rage and frustration to see the 35 year old trot out in any capacity at this point. In Refsnyder’s line of work, you typically only get one good pitch to hit, and to his credit he attacked it, unleashing on a 1-1 curveball over the heart of the plate after waving over the same pitch in the dirt at 1-0.

He fouled it off, stomping in frustration with some manner of precognition for what was to come. A 100 mph ball high on the heater merely reset his eyeline for pitch five, the breaking ball at the bottom of the zone, flied lazily to left to quell the final threat. Crowd noise buzzed around the edges of the broadcast. Fuzziness around the edges from millions of games across a century of this sport. The Mariners once again share the same record as the cumulative achievement of all of baseball’s history: .500.

Here are the lineups for the series finale in Washington. Let’s discuss.

For the Phillies:

For the Nationals:

After Wednesday night in Minnesota, the Dodgers have played 81 games, expecatly half of their 2026 regular season schedule. They are 52-29, and it doesn’t take a math whiz to realize they are on pace for 104 wins.

Here’s a glance at the first half of the schedule and how it compares to what’s left over the final three-plus months.

Interleague winds down

The Dodgers’ previous 12 games were all against American League teams. They’ve fared pretty well in interleague play thus far, going 20-10, the best record in MLB. But after 30 interleague games in the first half, only 18 such games remain, the first three of which are in a minor league ballpark:

• June 29-July 1 at A’s in West Sacramento
• July 17-19 at New York Yankees
• July 28-30 vs. Seattle Mariners
• July 31-August 2 vs. Boston Red Sox
• August 10-12 vs. Kansas City Royals
• August 28-30 at Detroit Tigers

Getting used to the Padres

The Dodgers played 24 games against the National League West thus far, and have 28 games remaining. The difference here is they’ve played the San Francisco Giants, Arizona Diamondbacks, and Colorado Rockies twice each so far, but they’ve only played the San Diego Padres once.

They open the second half of the schedule in San Diego for three games, then one weekend later host the Padres for four games. The two also play in the final week of the season at Dodger Stadium, giving this year’s schedule the odd quirk of the Dodgers playing the Padres all six games at Petco Park before playing any of the seven at Dodger Stadium.

un-Red emails

The only National League team the Dodgers haven’t yet played in 2026 is the Cincinnati Reds, and that won’t get rectified until the final month of the season. The entirety of their season series will be played over 11 days, with three games in Los Angeles from September 7-9 followed by four games at Great American Ball Park from September 14-17.

The Dodgers played a dozen games against the NL Central in the first half, with 20 remaining. The other slight difference in halves is that the Dodgers will play four games against the Brewers at home from August 13-16 after playing three games in Milwaukee in the first half.

Other things are pretty much even. The Dodgers played 15 games against the NL East thus far, and will play 15 more against that division the rest of the way. They’ve played 40 games at home and 41 road contests to date, and will flip that for the final 81 games.