Lifting a Heavy Lodolo: Phillies 5, Reds 1

Gunslingers at high noon. Samurai meeting in an open field. Pistols at dawn. A duel draws every tension into a single point of conflict, offering room for glory and mistakes, but not uncertainty. There must be one winner and one loser. And so it is with baseball and its duels between pitchers.

The Phillies put two on in the first (Trea Turner via hit, Alec Bohm via walk), but couldn’t bring either as far as third. Ranger Suárez put the Reds down in order in the second. Not to be outdone, Nick Lodolo sent all three Phils he faced in the inning down on swinging strikes. Ranger couldn’t quite match that; his two strikeouts in the third sandwiched a groundout. Still, you’d have to have a…