When Phillies need him most, Zack Wheeler drops D-backs back to earth

PHOENIX — Zack Wheeler didn’t know what would transpire in the hours after he visited with media before Friday’s Game 4 of the National League Championship Series. But the pitcher with the lowest WHIP and opposing batting average in playoff history understood the impact it might have on the next time he was due to take the ball.

One night after each team used eight pitchers and the Phillies’ beleaguered bullpen found itself on the wrong end for a second straight night, Wheeler’s ability to work deep into a game was never more valuable. He threw seven innings, untouched until the first batter of the seventh, leaving the tattered remnants of the Phillies’ bullpen six outs to get in what became a 6-1 win in Game 5.

The Phillies are coming home, one win away from the World Series. They’ll have Aaron Nola pitching in Game 6 Monday night at Citizens Bank Park.

Wheeler was supported with three home runs, including mammoth blasts by Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper in the sixth and a two-run bomb by J.T. Realmuto in the eighth.

“As a pitcher it’s kind of on you, a lot of it,” Wheeler said. “So, you know, you’re definitely thinking about it coming into the game. … I know the bullpen was taxed a little bit, so I needed to go deep, and obviously I wanted that to be quality innings. So I was able to do that, go deep into the game, save the bullpen a little bit, and get out of there with a lead.”

Wheeler did exactly what the Phillies needed him to do after the disarray of Games 3 and 4. He didn’t give up a run until Alek Thomas, the pinch-hit home run hero of Game 4, led off the seventh with a solo blast. Even then, he needed just six pitches to get the last three outs, aided by a sensational diving play by Bryson Stott for the second out.

Wheeler lowered his postseason ERA to 2.08. He has allowed 18 hits in 26 innings over four starts, striking out 34 and walking two.

“All his stuff was good,” manager Rob Thomson said. “Breaking ball, the slurve, curveball. The two-seam was fantastic. I thought he did a great job. He gave us exactly what we needed with where our ‘pen was at.”

Making Wheeler’s outing all the more impressive was that Arizona had frequent traffic. Wheeler walked Corbin Carroll to start the game. Gabriel Moreno added a single, but Wheeler got a strikeout and a grounder to first to extinguish the threat. He worked around one-out singles in the third and fifth, and Christian Walker’s one-out double in the sixth, the Norristown native getting to third on a wild pitch before being stranded.

Wheeler may have gone back out for the eighth at 99 pitches if not for a long inning at bat, and the difference in a three-run cushion and a five-run bump mattered.

Wheeler peppered Arizona with fastballs, throwing his four-seamer 56 percent of the time, plus another 10 sinkers. His control made it such a difficult pitch to handle.

“I was able to locate it,” Wheeler said. “The shape of it wasn’t always the same. I was pulling some, which worked to my advantage a couple of times. Then some were kind of running arm side. I think people kind of go to effectively wild. I wasn’t really wild, but it wasn’t always doing the same thing. I think that played to my advantage.”

Jeff Hoffman, working for the fourth time in five days, allowed a leadoff single and nothing else in the eighth.

Seranthony Dominguez got two outs in the ninth before a walk and a single off his glove. That required Matt Strahm to enter and strike out Carroll to end the game.

Arizona ace Zac Gallen, who had a forgettable Game 1 in Philadelphia, was bested by the Phillies’ order again. He made adjustments in the first inning, after Schwarber and Harper had launched home runs off him in Game 1, the former on the first pitch. But it still amounted to runs, and both sluggers would get their homers in eventually.

Gallen didn’t give Schwarber a fastball in his first at-bat, though Schwarber reached when he hit a curveball – more accurately, the curveball hit the cup of his bat – that went five feet in the air at 30.0 mph to the abandoned third-base spot. Harper got just two pitches in the zone, taking the last back up the box at 108.2 mph for a single.

Both scored in the inning, Schwarber on Stott’s single to right, Harper on a double steal with Stott where the Diamondbacks couldn’t execute the throw to the plate.

“It’s huge,” Schwarber said. “You can’t understate how big it was to be able to score first tonight, to get those runs across and let Wheeler do his thing.”

It was back to Plan A in the sixth. Gallen hung an 81 mph knuckle curve that neither knuckled nor curved to Schwarber. It went from his bat to the facing of the concourse in right field 461 feet away in an instant. Harper’s followed 11 pitches later with a 444-foot blast off a four-seamer at the top of the zone.

Harper and Schwarber have 11 playoff home runs for the Phillies, tying Jayson Werth for the most in club history. Schwarber’s homer is his 13th career LCS homer, tying Manny Ramirez for the most ever. With Nick Castellanos, the Phillies have three players with five home runs this postseason. Only the 2022 Phillies (Schwarber, Harper and Rhys Hoskins) and the 2017 Astros have ever done that before.

Arizona, which had used eight pitchers Friday, had a bullpen running on fumes, too. Realmuto availed himself of a Luis Frias cutter on the inner half that he yanked into the bullpen for needed insurance to make it 6-1 and ease the pressure on the pitching staff.

Phillies Notebook: Bullpen in overdrive catching up with Phillies in journey through desert

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