At first, the question seemed a little obvious. “How confident are you in the pitching matchup?” manager Rob Thomson was asked Wednesday, about three hours before Phillies lefthander Cristopher Sánchez would take the mound against the Dodgers.

Now, anybody who has been around Thomson understands that he’d sooner wear cargo shorts, a Grateful Dead T-shirt and flip-flops on a team flight instead of his usual natty coat-tie-chapeau ensemble than publicly betray even the slightest lack of trust in any of his players.

Besides, Sánchez has been a revelation this season. And all the extenuating circumstances had been offered. He was building off his first complete game. He’d been bothered by a strep throat. And, of course, the harsh reality that even really good pitchers have really bad games or simply hit the doldrums at some point during the season.

On second thought, though, it would have been interesting to hear the manager’s real thoughts had he been overcome by a temporary fit of transparency. Because as good as the lanky 27-year-old has been, he was coming off by far his worst outing of the season. He was tagged for seven earned runs in four innings against the Cubs at Wrigley Field on the Fourth of July.

To put it another way, he allowed as many runs while getting lit up like a firecracker as he had been in his previous seven starts. Combined. In a total of 44.1 innings. If Thomson was being totally honest, he would probably have conceded that his standard confidence would have been tempered by a large dash of caution and a heaping spoonful of curiosity. And that his fingers were firmly crossed.

Sánchez did everything the Phillies could have hoped he’d do. On another hot night in front of another sellout crowd at Citizens Bank Park, he held the first-place Dodgers to two runs over six innings.

That was good enough for the home team to win, 4-3. They’re the first team in baseball this year to go from zero to 60 (wins) and they did it in just 92 games. In franchise history, only the 1976 team, which started 60-28, reached that milestone faster.