Last night was pretty fun. Dollar dog night led to a sellout crowd for an NL East match-up between the Philadelphia Phillies and Washington Nationals, both teams struggling to play up to expectations this season. Monday night saw Ryan Howard end his home run drought to highlight a 3-for-3 night and a walk-off base hit from Domonic Brown after a rare blown save.

John Lannan was just one Jonathan Papelbon strike away from picking up his first win with the Philadelphia Phillies, which would have been picked up in his first game back from a stint on the disabled list and against his former team. But Chad Tracy was able to fight off enough pitches against the Phillies closer and muscled one over the right field seats with one strike to spare in the game. Tracy's solo home run tied the ballgame at four runs apiece, Papelbon's first blown save of the season.

Before the Phillies embarked on a 10-game road trip I laid out my expectations if I was to continue to believe this team might be capable of turning things around enough to make a postseason push something worth considering possible. As I reiterated last Monday, that was for the Phillies to pick up no fewer than six wins with stops in Milwaukee, Minnesota and Colorado. Seven wins would have been more optimal of course as they return home for a series with the Washington Nationals. As you know by now, the Phillies failed flat of that mark, returning home with just three souvenir wins from their trip, one in each city. To put it nicely, that road trip was an embarrassment on a number of levels.

I think I may have seen enough.

Carlos Gomez hit his 11th home run of the season against the Phillies in a blowout Sunday. Photo: Mike McGinnis/Getty Images

Allow me to go back to Friday morning for a brief moment.

Hey, it's June 7. There is a lot of baseball to be played and the Phillies are currently in the mix. As I said yesterday, a winning road trip followed by a home series victory against the Washington Nationals is an absolute must for me to take them seriously as a playoff contender. Last night was a solid start to the road trip and with Cliff Lee taking the mound tonight the odds appear to be pretty good the Phillies will leave Milwaukee with no less than a split. Considering how lowly the Brewers are right now, that is not great but I would take it if the rest of the road trip goes well.

Yeah, about that...

Cliff Lee had a 4-0 lead Friday night as the Phillies looked to be set to put the weekend road series on cruise control. Instead the Phillies saw that 4-0 lead vanish and it turned in to a deflating loss when Aramis Ramirez hit an RBI single to left field for the 5-4 win for the Brewers. OK, fine. That's baseball sometimes. Little did I know that loss would lead to two more, even more brutal losses over the rest of the weekend.

JP Crawford, the future shortstop of the Phillies? Photo: Press Telegram

The Philadelphia Phillies drafted what could be a future shortstop, if he does not skip on a shot at the big leagues now in favor of a scholarship offer to USC. JP Crawford, a shortstop from Lakewood High School in Lakewood, California, was drafted by the Phillies with the 16th overall pick last night in the MLB Amateur Draft. Now Crawford must decide between entering the Phillies farm system out of high school or follow through and play some college baseball with the USC Trojans.

Crawford has some promising projections based on what I have seen from baseball people that pay way more attention to this stuff than I do. In brief, it looks like he is projected to be a solid defensive player and he may also bring some power to the line-up down the road. Chris Wheeler brought up the point last night during the game, following the draft selection, that a lot of times short stops drafted out of high school will actually grow out of the position as they get older. That is a fair point to make, although it seems most accounts are suggesting he will stay at shortstop as he comes up through the system. This, of course, if he skips out on USC. The Phillies may have to make a solid contract offer to sway him away from college baseball, so stay tuned.

Now that is the way to kick off a road trip. The Phillies got to Brewers starter Wily Peralta early with two runs in the first inning, another in the second and one more in the third and they tacked on one more in the fifth inning with a Delmon Young solo home run to build a steady 5-0 lead. Tyler Cloyd was efficient and composed in picking up his second victory, evening his record at 2-2. On the night the minor league call-up went in to the seventh inning and allowed just four hits and managed to avoid letting five walks cost him. With the win the Phillies moved one game above .500 and evened their road record at 15-15.

Everything seemed to go according to plan yesterday afternoon as the Philadelphia Phillies completed a three-game sweep of the lowly Miami Marlins. Cole Hamels pitched a strong seven innings and the offense provided enough of a cushion in the later innings to assure him an elusive second win fueled by a Ryan Howard triple and a Domonic Brown home run. The extra breathing room also allowed the back-end of the bullpen's main guns to get an extra day of rest as the Phillies won by a score of 6-1.

With the win the Phillies are finally back at .500 in the standings as they now embark on a road trip to Milwaukee. A four game set with the Brewers begins tonight in Miller Park where the Brew Crew are just 13-19. The Brewers are scuffling along this season, with a record of 22-36 overall having them sunk in the bottom of the NL Central and 15.5 games behind the division-leading St. Louis Cardinals. Meanwhile, the Phillies have quietly moved in to second place in the NL East, holding just a half game lead on the Washington Nationals, who just sent Stephen Strasburg to a disabled list that already includes Bryce Harper, Wilson Ramos and Danny Espinosa. The time for the Phillies to prove they have turned a corner is now.

If you left early, you deserve a good kick in the... (Photo: Brian Garfinkel/Getty Images via Phillies.com)

Those who have been following my Phillies commentary for the past couple of years on Twitter may have seen me throw out a #27outs hash tag from time to time. The simple tweet is a reminder to all Phillies and baseball fans that even though things look as though they are going downhill early on in a baseball game that the sport has 27 outs per team for a reason. Last night's game between the Phillies and Marlins was another text book example of the beauty of 27 outs. In fact, last night proved that sometimes you need 30 outs, or in last night's case you need 33 outs.

The Phillies stunned the Marlins in eleven innings with a game-tying solo home run and a walk-off grand slam off the bat of John Mayberry Jr. Elsewhere in the NL East the Atlanta Braves rallied from a  two-run deficit and walked off against the Pittsburgh Pirates in ten innings. Down in the nation's capital the Washington Nationals scored two runs in the ninth inning to walk off against the New York Mets. It was a wild night in the NL East.

The Philadelphia Phillies currently have four all stars on the roster, the way I see it, and two of them put on a show last night in a victory over the Miami Marlins. Kyle Kendrick and Domonic Brown are having years worthy of all-star recognition and if they can keep producing at the level they have so far, they should absolutely be in the running for an all-star spot representing the National League. The four all-stars I see on the Phillies right now are Brown, Kendrick, Cliff Lee and Jonathan Papelbon.

Let's start with Brown, who has become must-see television in not just Philadelphia but around Major League Baseball. The two-time NL Player of the Week and last month's Player of the Month did it again last night with another home run launched in to the stands in Citizens Bank Park. He currently leads the National League with 17 home runs -- three more than Colorado's Carlos Gonzalez  and Atlanta's B.J. Upton --  and his 42 RBIs is in the top five in the league and leads all NL outfielders. There are other outfielders with a better batting average of course, but Brown's .291 batting average is climbing the leader boards and right in the company of guys like Ryan Braun, Hunter Pence, Andrew McCutchen and Bryce Harper. That is pretty solid company. Brown also leads all NL outfielders with a .592 slugging percentage.

If Brown can continue to have as fun a June as he did in May, Brown should absolutely be a lock for an all-star roster spot, and the push to land him in the starting line-up should officially be on by Phillies fans online and in the park. I feel pretty confident that even if Brown is not voted in by the fans, his chances of making the team are probably pretty decent if his bat stays this hot. San Francisco Giants manager Bruce Bochy would have some explaining to do if he did not include a player who could potentially be leading the league in home runs to his all-star roster.

Was there a better player for the Philadelphia Phillies in the 1990s than Curt Schilling? Photo: Getty Images

Who was the best Philadelphia Phillie of the 1970s, Mike Schmidt or Steve Carlton? You can make a nice argument for either, although Schmidt would be a hands down winner for Phillie of the 1980s. There's not even question about that. But have you taken any time to figure out who is the best Phillies player of the 1990s? In a decade that saw only a quick flash of success in terms of wins and losses, with just one winning season taking the team all the way to a heart breaking Game Six of the World Series in 1993, it is mostly slim pickings. While a small handful of players experienced career years in Philadelphia, there is only one player who managed to turn out high quality performances for the majority of the decade.

Curt Schilling, who will be inducted to the Phillies Wall of Fame on Friday, August 2, was the best Philadelphia Phillie of the 1990s, and that should go without much debate.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the 1993 Philadelphia Phillies going from worst to first and winning the National League pennant. All season long we will take a look back at each game of the 1993 season.

The Phillies let one slip away in the series opener in Cincinnati, but the bats would not allow that to happen this time, as the calendar flipped form May to June. A day after Larry Andersen took the loss after struggling on the mound, it was the veteran reliever who picked up the win as the offense came through in the late innings for a 6-3 victory. Of course, the Reds played some sloppy baseball late in the game as well to help give the game away.