BOSTON — Kyle Schwarber broke a scoreless game in the eighth inning Thursday night, driving a home run off Boston reliever Tyler Samaniego to lift the Phillies to a 3-1 win over the Red Sox in a rain-delayed finish at Fenway Park.
The blast was Schwarber’s league-leading 18th homer and it came after Ranger Suárez and Jesús Luzardo matched up into the sixth inning in a tight, low-scoring game. Schwarber said after the game that he was “just happy that I was able to put together a good at-bat there and connect,” and added that “the biggest thing in that whole series was the pitching for us was lights out.”
The Phillies needed the swing. They had scored only six runs in the three games of the series and allowed five, a grind that still ended with a result few clubs manage. Philadelphia became the first team since the 2005 Mets to win five consecutive series after dropping six series in a row, a hard reset that has turned the month into something more stable than the early season looked.
Thursday’s game also carried a layer of familiarity that was impossible to miss. Luzardo, who now pitches for Philadelphia after the club gave him a five-year, $135 million extension, went against Suárez, a left-hander who spent half his life in the organization after signing for $25,000 as a 16-year-old from Venezuela. Suárez made his major league debut in 2018 and has long been a different pitcher in October, including a save in the pennant-clinching win over the Padres in 2022.
For Luzardo, the matchup was as personal as it was competitive. He said Suárez is “like a brother to me,” and described the duel as fun even as Suárez made life difficult. Luzardo said it was “definitely fun going against Ranger a little bit,” that “he was having a good time and made it tough for us,” and that “it was fun going against him.”
Suárez, for his part, did not frame the night as a referendum on the Phillies’ decision to move forward with Luzardo instead of keeping him. Asked whether he was motivated to prove them wrong, he said, “Not really,” adding that he went out there “just like another game.” Suárez said, “They had their plans, and now I’m here in Boston,” and, “I’m happy here.”
That is the simplest reading of the night in Boston: Schwarber keeps producing, the pitching keeps carrying, and the Phillies keep stacking wins while one of their most familiar arms now works on the other side of the field. The numbers tell the shape of it, but the bigger story is that Philadelphia’s season no longer looks like a search for answers. It looks like a team that has found enough of them to keep going.
