With the rain pouring down and the Pirates clinging to a one-run lead in the ninth inning, Braxton Ashcraft didn't waver. 

Making his fourth major-league appearance, he'd allowed a one-out double to Trea Turner and intentionally walked Kyle Schwarber before this game-ending double play off the bat of Alec Bohm: 

"I get chills," Don Kelly said. "Same thing with Isaac Mattson yesterday. For these guys to be able to step up in that moment, come in and fill up the strike zone. Ash has shown the ability to do that with all his pitches, too. I felt like everything looked sharp for him and he did a tremendous job."

Not only did Ashcraft finish off a 2-1 victory and a series sweep of the Phillies, but he also secured his first big-league win in relief of Paul Skenes. After the latter went 7 2/3 innings, Ashcraft followed by getting the final out of the eighth and tossing a scoreless ninth against the top of Philadelphia's potent lineup. 

“It’s what we’ve been working for," Ashcraft said. "It’s what we worked for going into spring training, through spring training. You want to win ball games, and winning three in a row means a lot to me and all the guys in this clubhouse. I think that this is the start of something that creates a different feel in the clubhouse amongst everybody. Winning gets contagious, so I think we’re all looking forward to the next games to come, the next weeks and months and see how the season unfolds.”

Ashcraft allowed the double to Turner in the ninth and walked a batter in the eighth, coming a pitch shy of exiting the inning without any baserunners reaching. In fact, he threw a 2-2 fastball at 98 mph to Brandon Marsh, the first batter he faced, and home plate umpire Scott Barry declared it low and out of the strike zone. Ashcraft didn't get discouraged. He locked back in and got Rafael Marchan to ground out to end the inning. 

"It’s a job. You go out there to get outs. The biggest piece to that is just making pitches," Ashcraft said. "The eighth inning to Marsh, I thought I made two really good pitches, but that’s how the game goes. It’s part of the game and you go back and you make the pitch to the next guy, get an out, sit down for that ninth and hope that they give you that ball." 

That's exactly what Kelly did. Ashcraft said that when he came out after the eighth, the manager looked at him and said, "Stay locked in." 

"Through my whole career, it’s not necessarily like, ‘You have the next inning,' it’s ‘I’m going until they tell me I can’t go anymore,' " Ashcraft said. "So I didn’t come into that game thinking I was just going to throw one out. I came in thinking that I’m throwing four."

• Kelly said Skenes was removed after registering two outs in the eighth because they "felt like he was done." 

"He emptied the tank there that inning and just felt like it was an opportunity to go to Ashcraft," Kelly said, adding that the decision to let Ashcraft go back out for the ninth stemmed from the amount of pitches he threw in the eighth. "David Bednar could've pitched. He's a horse. He'd take the ball. He's ready to go, but us protecting him a little bit. He's three of four going into today. He hasn't gone back-to-back-to-back and of those three of four, there were two in a row, so just felt like Ashcraft's stuff looked good and wanted to ride it out with him and protect David. He would take the ball." 

• Oneil Cruz was held in check offensively before drawing a four-pitch walk off Cristopher Sanchez to lead off the eighth. Sanchez was subsequently replaced by Orion Kerkering and, after a stolen base by Cruz, Andrew McCutchen delivered the go-ahead single.

"That's a big moment, and you feel it," Kelly said. "When you're going through that, you feel the crowd and you feel the moment. Just for him to stick with it today, he had some tough at-bats early but to stay with it, get a big walk there, stolen base and score the winning run was awesome."

• The Phillies are a top-10 offense in Major League Baseball based on runs scored (297) this season. They are operating without an injured Bryce Harper, but the Pirates held them to six runs over three games. They scored just two runs in the final two games of the series. 

"It's frustrating, just the hitters that we have and the outings we're getting from the pitchers,” Bryson Stott told reporters in the Phillies’ clubhouse. “Feel like we're letting them down."

• Skenes once again dominated the Phillies after holding them to one run over eight innings on May 18. 

"I thought we swung the bats better in this game than the first game,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said. “We got him out of the game, we got his pitch count a little bit better than the first game, he's tough."

• With these three wins against a Philadelphia team that's holding the National League's third and final wild card spot, the Pirates are now 5-16 against teams currently over .500. That's right. 

"It definitely doesn't bring us down," Skenes said when asked about the Pirates' first series sweep and their first three-game winning streak. "I think we've been playing pretty good ball for a little bit now and either haven't come out with Ws or lost by a run or something like that in a few games. I've been happy with the baseball we've been playing. It's nice to finally get some wins out of it, too. It's easy to go on a losing streak, too, so we've just got to keep going."