PHOENIX -- After an excruciating loss to the Giants on Wednesday, the Diamondbacks were in desperate need of a bounce-back win in Friday night's series opener against the Phillies at Chase Field.
And early on, it looked like they might get one.
A big crowd that was energized from the start saw the Diamondbacks score a pair of runs in the first inning to give Ryne Nelson a lead to work with.
But that was all the Diamondbacks’ offense could muster the rest of the game as the Phillies wore down Nelson and dealt Arizona's longshot postseason bid a blow with an 8-2 win.
The loss, combined with the Mets’ win over the Nationals, dropped Arizona to three games behind New York for the third and final NL Wild Card spot with eight games remaining. The Reds, by virtue of their win over the Cubs, also moved a game ahead of the Diamondbacks.
"The day started off well enough," Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said. "Ketel [Marte] gets off a good swing and hits a home run. Follow that up with another run and some good approaches [at the plate], you're sitting 2-0. So I was very pleased with what happened early."
But Nelson, who has been the team's most consistent starter all year, didn't feel like he had his best stuff, and it was a grind for him to hold the Phillies to one run through four innings.
Nelson's pitch count was still manageable at just 64 pitches, but in the fifth, the Phillies really grinded out their at-bats. Harrison Bader hit a two-out homer for the inning's only run, but Philadelphia forced the right-hander to throw 31 pitches to get out of the frame.
"Today is definitely one of those weird ones where I just didn't necessarily have my best stuff," Nelson said. "Went out there and competed with what I had. It was not just [the fifth], but I had trouble putting guys away with two strikes and then just didn't quite feel like I had that putaway pitch tonight."
While the Phillies continued to score runs against the Arizona bullpen, the Diamondbacks’ offense couldn't push across another run against starter Taijuan Walker, or reliever Walker Buehler, who took over in the fifth.
"We just kind of went into a different mindset, where the name of the game was execution, and we just were not executing at a high level in certain areas, at certain times," Lovullo said. "You know, runners in scoring position, I feel like we gave a couple of at-bats away. We made a big error to start the eighth inning. I think we were misfiring some pitches, poor pitch sequencing, perhaps some mistakes. And this is a team, when you do something like that, they can put up those big points."
The bullpen has been a sore spot for the Diamondbacks all season. Arizona lost both of its closers early on to Tommy John surgery. Another one of their better bullpen arms, Kevin Ginkel, also suffered a season-ending injury.
Given all that, the Diamondbacks have done their best to try and mix and match. Sometimes it works, but when it doesn't, nights like Friday happen, when the Phillies scored six runs in the final four innings against the ’pen.
The Diamondbacks have little margin for error over the next nine days, and with each loss -- and Mets win -- it gets smaller and smaller.
"We got to find a way to digest this and just keep digging in and moving on," Lovullo said. "That's all we can do."