By RYAN LAWRENCE

rlawrence@delcotimes.com

 @ryanlawrence21

WASHINGTON – The Phillies don’t have any grand visions of rescuing their mulligan of a season and marching into the playoffs en route to the World Series in the next three months.

The front office, the manager and the 25 players in the visiting clubhouse at Nationals Park on Wednesday afternoon were realistic. They weren’t a last place team fresh of selling off their two All-Star outfielders for nothing.

But perhaps an influx of new blood can bring a different look to a team that underachieved for the first four months of the season.

New right fielder Nate Schierholtz slugged a go-ahead home run to complement two solo swings from Jimmy Rollins as the Phillies nipped the Nationals 3-2.

A night after blanking the Nats behind Cliff Lee, the Phils won their first series against Washington this season. It was their first series win over any divisional foe since taking two of three at Citi Field against the Mets in the last three days of May.

“I think if you look at us, we’ve got some life to us, guys are having fun,” manager Charlie Manuel said of winning back-to-back games since the season’s white flag was flown with the trades of Shane Victorino and Hunter Pence. “We’ve got some guys that are trying to show something. Hopefully we can get better.”

While Rollins, the longest-tenured Phillie, put his mark on the latest victory, following up Tuesday’s inside-the-park job with two, no-doubt-about-it, over-the-fence solo shots off Washington starter Edwin Jackson, the new guys made positive first impressions.

Schierholtz, fresh off a cross-country flight from San Francisco, was at least as good as Hunter Pence in his first game in a Phillies uniform. After Rollins’ second home run in as many at-bats tied the game at 2-2 in the fifth, Schierholtz drilled the first pitch he saw into the right field seats to put the Phils in front.

The home run was the sixth of the season for Schierholtz, who went 2-for-5 in his Phillies’ debut.

“I know there’s a lot of upside here,” Schierholtz said of joining a last place team with first place expectations. “The Phillies are up at the top so I don’t think there’s any reason why we can’t start winning games and make things interesting. For me, I’m excited to be here.”

Schierholtz, who started in right in the Phillies new-look outfield, also made two nice plays with his glove, including a sliding snag on a Bryce Harper line drive to begin the bottom of the eighth inning. It proved to be an important out, since Ryan Zimmerman followed with a pinch-hit single.

“I had to go a long way – I started out in the gap, I was playing away from the line, so I wasn’t 100 percent sure I was going to get to it,” Schierholtz said. “But, I made it.”

Josh Lindblom, the key piece of the deal that sent Victorino to the Dodgers, also checked into his first Phillies game.

After Schierholtz made his sliding catch, Lindblom was summoned in from the bullpen to take on the middle of the Nats order. After giving up the single to Zimmerman, Lindblom blew away cleanup hitter Michael Morse with a 94-MPH fastball to record the all-important second out of the inning.

The inning and Nats’ rally ended with Erik Kratz gunning down Zimmerman on a stolen base attempt.

Like Schierholtz, Lindblom was perfectly comfortable with leaving a pennant race on the west coast for a reclamation project in South Philly.

“It’s the first day of school, I’m excited,” Lindblom said before the game. “(The Dodgers) went into St. Louis last year at the end of August. We swept them and put them 11 or 12 games out. You saw what they did last year.

“This team, with the pitching staff, offense, lineup -- there’s a lot of baseball left to be played. A lot of things can happen in that time. All the pieces are here, I think, to make a run at it, especially with the second wildcard. It’ll be a race to the finish line.”

Vance Worley held Washington to two unearned runs in seven innings en route to his sixth win of the season. After giving up both of his runs in the first inning, an inning that included a couple of defensive miscues from Kevin Frandsen at third and Chase Utley at second, Worley allowed four singles in the six shutout frames that followed.

Jonathan Papelbon survived a second, loud, long out – a Danny Espinosa bomb that Dom Brown used all of his six-foot, five-inches to catch at the left field wall – to record his 23^rdsave of the season in a 1-2-3 ninth inning.

“We’re a bunch of guys who want to go out and battle and win,” Schierholtz said after his first day was complete. “That’s why I’m here.”

The new guys are enthusiastic, but perhaps not realistic. Which might not be the worst thing to add to a team that was reeling before they arrived.