"With one swing Tuesday night, Jayson Werth accomplished what Jimmy Rollins couldn't.

He made Phillies fans cheer.

For a while, though, it didn't look promising. Facing the sad-sack Nationals in the opener of a nine-game homestand, the Phillies trailed by three runs in the fifth inning. Once again, their underperforming offense was being muted, and the 15th straight sellout crowd at Citizens Bank Park had little to do besides boo Rollins, who riled them with criticism last week.

But the Phils were, after all, facing the Nationals, losers of their previous 10 games. So, they rallied, scoring twice in the fifth inning and once in the seventh before Werth's solo homer into the left-field bleachers in the eighth gave them a 5-4 victory and kept them 1 1/2 games behind the division-leading New York Mets.

"Some cheers, some boos," Rollins said, summing up his return home after grousing that Phillies fans don't cheer for the team unconditionally. "There's been worse than that. But, at the end, we won, so everyone cheered."

After driving a two-strike curveball from reliever Steven Shell for his career-high 17th home run, Werth dropped his bat, turned to the Phillies' dugout and pumped his fist.

At last, the offense delivered. For the first time since last Wednesday night, and for only the fifth time in 12 games, the Phillies produced more than three runs.

"We're a lot better club than the way we've been playing," Werth said after the Phillies (67-58) won for the third time in four games, all by one run against last-place teams. "But we're a game-and-a-half out. It seems to me like everybody's making it seem like we're out of it. We're in striking distance. I feel like we're the best team in the division. It's up to us to play like it.""