Following a lengthy run of excruciating losses, the Phillies avoided yet another one on Friday night when a scuffling Brad Miller provided one of the season’s best moments with a 10th-inning walk-off double.

The stunning victory, perhaps a season-saver, allowed three realities for this oft-criticized team to fully crystalize.

  1. The Phillies need to find someone, anyone, who can come out of the bullpen and consistently drop the hammer late in games.
  2. They don’t currently have that guy.
  3. If they want this year to be different, they have to win, and they have to win right now.

A once promising June that turned in the cruelest of ways isn’t coming back. The Phillies can’t erase the David Hale and Neftalí Feliz nightmares, nor can they wipe away the still growing list of late-inning meltdowns that continue to weigh over this team.

Joe Girardi isn’t getting back any of his questionable decisions, ones that have likely kept him up on more than a few nights recently. Those games are in the books, the wounds persist, and the damage to their 38-41 record has been done.

But, with nine games remaining before the All-Star break, the Phillies can do exactly what they did for every inning but the ninth on Friday night, which is play good baseball against a good opponent. Do that enough between now and next Sunday, and they will shut it down for a few days still right in the thick of an unexpectedly wide-open division race.

Despite a multitude of persistent and very, very obvious flaws, somehow, opportunity remains this team’s reality.

For as inconsistent, sloppy, insipid, and baffling as the Phillies’ play has often been this season, and was in the ninth tonight, they have the gift of 24 remaining games before the trade deadline to position themselves as buyers.

To accept the gift, they will have to do things they’ve yet to do this season. Get multiple players hot for a prolonged stretch. Catch the ball. Have the bullpen go, I don’t know, a few games without pissing all over the work done to consistently build the leads they eventually blow.

Do those things and the vibe in the clubhouse changes. The vibe around the city changes. The 22,653 fans that were in attendance tonight becomes 32,653 fans a month from now. Belief stirs. Shit gets weird.

Of course, this is all easier said than done, particularly for a team that routinely struggles to get out of its own way. But there was a perceptible difference about the product the Phillies fielded against the Padres in their 4-3 win Friday night. It was a team finally at full-strength, something it has rarely been.

Zack Wheeler’s latest outstanding effort, 7 2/3 innings of shutout baseball that now gives him a 2.05 ERA, was aided by an opportunistic offense early and the long-awaited return of Didi Gregorius, who spent 50 days sidelined with elbow troubles.

The return of both Gregorius and Jean Segura, who came off the injured list earlier this week, significantly lengthens a lineup that, at least on paper, looks balanced, deep, and formidable. That was evident in this one as the duo reached base a total of four times.

In his second at-bat, Gregorius launched his fifth homer of the season, his first since May 5:

Who knows, maybe the Phillies start to look more like the offense that was fifth in runs scored a season ago and less like the one that entered the night 17th this season.

I like to think that I have a pretty good feel for where fans are at on this team. My guess is most of the recent conversations about the Phillies have included an abundance of understandable skepticism, anger, and shit-talking — lots of shit-talking.

The boos that rained down on Girardi when he went out to get Wheeler in the eighth pretty much confirms that hunch.

And I get it. I’m not here to tell you to buy in after one win, one that came after the bullpen’s eighth blown save in nine games. I’m not selling the idea that we just witnessed Chapter 1 of the turnaround, or that another ridiculous loss isn’t right around the corner. I’m just pointing out that as bad as they’ve been, the Phillies still have an opportunity to change the trajectory of what has been a mostly deflating season.