Self-inflicted wounds threaten Phillies' playoff push

The Philadelphia Phillies capped a brutal weekend in Pittsburgh with a 6-4 loss in 10 innings Sunday. The defending National League champions find themselves a half-game behind Miami and Milwaukee for the third wild-card spot.

Too often this season, the team has been its own worst enemy. On Sunday, three Phillies had varying degrees of culpability.

Manager Rob Thomson: Before the game had even started, he made two head-scratching decisions. Thomson benched Bryson Stott and Brandon Marsh — both left-handed hitters — with the Pirates sending 43-year-old southpaw Rich Hill to the mound. Stott, who bats .310 against lefties, and Marsh have been two of the more productive hitters in the lineup recently. 

Marsh entered the game as a pinch-runner and defensive replacement for Kyle Schwarber, but Stott never played. Hill pitched five solid innings, but after he was pulled, three of the five relievers Pittsburgh used were right-handed. 

Still, Stott wasn't even called for pinch-hitting duties, with Thomson instead leaving both Edmundo Sosa and Josh Harrison in the game.

Equally puzzling was the removal of starting pitcher Cristopher Sanchez after five innings and just 73 pitches. Sanchez had hit three batters, but he was pitching a no-hitter. His replacement, Seranthony Dominguez, allowed a single and a home run to the batters he faced.

Shortstop Trea Turner: It was a rough week for the $300-million free-agency acquisition — a week that saw him ejected Monday, benched Wednesday and dropped to the seventh in the lineup Saturday. On Sunday, Turner committed his 13th error — second most of any National Leaguer — by interfering with a pop-up that third baseman Edmundo Sosa had clearly signaled was his.

“We’ve got to clean it up," Thomson said, per the Philadelphia Inquirer. "We made some fundamental mistakes. [Poor] communication on pop-ups, we’ve seen that a few times this year. Baserunning mistakes. We’ve got to clean it all up, and we will.”