HOUSTON — The slider that Zack Wheeler threw to Alex Bregman in the bottom of the fifth inning wouldn’t have been more alarming if it was flashing red and blue. It did not dart, or dive, or act in any other way like a pitch that normally comes from Wheeler’s right hand. It was just kind of there.
Bregman, a third baseman who has been one of the primary constants during the Astros’ half-decade of dominance, did exactly what anyone would have expected him to do with such a pitch. He mashed it: so high and so hard that all anybody could do was crane their neck and watch.
The big question to emerge from the Phillies’ 5-2 loss to the Astros in Game 2 of the World Series is not the sort of thing that a team with championship aspirations can afford to be asking itself with three wins remaining against an opponent this good. Is five days enough time for Wheeler to get himself right? Or has the grind of a marathon season caught up to him for good?
If not for some important context, it would be easy to dismiss such concerns as alarmist. One crooked outing does not typically erase a six-week stretch like the one Wheeler carried into Minute Maid Park on Saturday. The five runs that he allowed — two of them on Bregman’s fifth inning homer, another two within his first four pitches of the game — were as many as he had given up in his first four postseason starts combined. The Phillies won three of those outings, the last of which clinched the National League Championship and gave them their first World Series berth in 13 years. One bad start is no reason to panic.
Except for the context. Again, it is important.
The day before the Phillies departed for Houston, manager Rob Thomson said that he was considering postponing Wheeler’s first World Series start until Game 2. On the one hand, this made some sense. The Phillies’ early clinch in the NLCS meant that Aaron Nola would go 10 days between starts if he waited until Game 2. Wheeler would be operating on normal rest if he pitched in Game 1. One guy needed work. The other guy could use a blow. Perfectly reasonable. . . if that was all there was to it.
If there is more, it’s not the kind of thing you’d expect a manager to say. Competitive advantage and all. But it’s worth noting that the Phillies have managed Wheeler extremely carefully since the bout of forearm tendinitis that shut him down for a stretch in September. The 96 pitches he threw in his first postseason start were 19 more than he’d thrown in the previous seven weeks. Since then, Thomson has pulled him after 79, 83 and 87 pitches, the last with one out in the seventh inning of the NLCS clincher. Wheeler later agreed with his manager’s observation that he was losing his stuff.
Which brings us back to Saturday night. The Astros came out swinging, early and often. Their first three hitters all doubled — Jose Altuve and Jeremy Pena on the first pitches they saw, Yordan Alvarez on the second. Four pitches into the game, the Astros held a 2-0 lead that would grow to 3-0 before the first inning was done.
Wheeler made it through the next three frames unscathed, but he did so with a fastball that was topping out at 96 instead of his usual 99, and a slider and cutter that were missing their usual bite. In the fifth inning, the Astros finally capitalized. Wheeler finished the frame after Bregman’s home run, it was evident to anybody that he was nothing close to himself. The final line: six hits, three walks, five runs, and a mere three strikeouts.
Granted, Wheeler could have been brilliant and it may not have mattered. The Phillies only scored a run each in the seventh and ninth innings.It was neither what they needed nor what they have come to expect. The Phillies have scored their runs in bunches this season. In Game 1, they blitzed their way back from a 5-0 deficit. In Game 2, the big inning never came.
The bats were not the issue, though. Not the big one. Nor were any of the other little nits you might have picked to distract yourself from the big one. Neither Edmundo Sosa nor Matt Vierling validated Thomson’s decision to start them against Astros lefty Framber Valdez. Sosa had an error, Vierling allowed a runner to move from second to third on a fly out to center field, neither came close to mustering any offense at the plate. But, then, Thomson has been making the same decision all postseason. You have to stretch awfully far to convince yourself that Bryson Stott or Brandon Marsh would have saved the day.
No, Wheeler was the issue. At least, he was the one that mattered. After stunning the Astros with a five-run comeback and an extra innings victory in Game 1, the Phillies now find themselves locked in a one-all series, with the starting pitchers still to be determined for Games 3 and 4. They’ve been in the exact same situation in each of their last two series. Both times, it worked out. The last time though, there was comfort in knowing that they had Wheeler in Game 5. Now, they either need three straight wins without him, or they will need the best version of him in Game 6.
