Phillies offense finds another gear with 36 to play

Philadelphia is scoring 5.5 runs per game over its last 10, up a full run from the prior stretch, and the results show: four straight wins, a 69-57 record, and a firm grip on a playoff seed with 36 games left.

The lineup has real depth right now. Schwarber and Harper anchor it the way they're supposed to — Schwarber at 25 home runs, Harper slashing .277/.397/.531 — and Bryan De La Cruz has been quietly excellent since joining the mix, hitting .365 in 23 games. Luiz Arráez, who I noted last week delivered an RBI single in his first at-bat as a Phillie, slots into a lineup that is suddenly hard to navigate top to bottom.

The other number worth keeping is 22-10 in one-run games. That's not luck over a sample that size; that's a team that knows how to close. Jhoan Duran, the closer, has been nearly untouchable all season, and the back end of the bullpen has held leads when it needed to.

Seven games back in the division with 36 to play is a real gap, but the Phillies are in the fifth seed and playing their best baseball in weeks. The next 10 days will tell a lot about whether this is a genuine surge or another false peak like the one July erased.