Categories: 2023 Postgame Recaps

Wheeler delivers another postseason gem to give Phillies series lead

Zack Wheeler delivered in Game 5 of the National League Championship Series. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

PHOENIX– The Phillies needed another all-timer of an outing from Zack Wheeler and he delivered.

The Phillies ace allowed only one run through seven innings while striking out eight to earn the win in the Phillies’ 6-1 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks in Game 5 of the National League Championship Series at Chase Field in Phoenix.

With the Phillies emptying the bullpen in Game 4, the Phillies needed length and they got it. Wheeler’s fastball was working and he hammered the Diamondbacks with the hard stuff.

Fifty-five of his 99 pitches thrown were four-seam fastballs. He was consistently hitting 97 mph with the pitch and setting up the soft stuff. He induced a combined 10 whiffs on his sweeper, slider and curveball.

“I was able to locate it,” Wheeler said about his fastball. “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.”

Wheeler’s postseason legend continues to grow. He now has a 2.08 ERA in this year’s postseason and a career 2.48 ERA postseason ERA.

“I think he just has all the confidence in his ability to throw any pitch in any count,” Bryce Harper said about Wheeler. “He’s not scared. He goes out there and does his job. As a baseball player watching that, you’re watching just an incredible moment every time he goes out there. When he gives the team a chance to win each night he is out there, it’s incredible. That’s why he is here. That’s why he has the opportunity to do this every fifth day. I just love seeing him do it.”

Thanks to home runs from Kyle Schwarber, Harper and J.T. Realmuto, the Phillies bullpen was able to quickly put the game to bed with a relatively painless eighth and ninth innings from Jeff Hoffman and Seranthony Domínguez. Matt Strahm came in to clean up the dirty inning after Domínguez allowed two runners to reach base on a walk and infield single.

The Phillies scored two in the first inning to give Wheeler the early lead. Schwarber reached base on a swinging bunt to the third base side and Harper hit a hard-hit single up the middle.

With two out, Bryson Stott came through with a single to right field on a low curveball. The Phillies added another on a successful double steal. Stott stopped in between first and second. Harper ran home and Ketel Marte’s throw was off line. Harper, who did not have a clean path to the plate, ran into the catcher Gabriel Moreno.

Manager Rob Thomson said after the game that the call came from the dugout.

“Really we just wanted to put pressure on them,” Thomson said postgame. “There was two out there at the time, and they have to make two good throws. And I think that the catcher’s throw was a little bit low, so it causes a little bit of a rush for the second baseman, so it worked out.”

Moreno was shaken up, but he remained in the game. Harper was serenaded with boos and “Harper sucks” chants as he walked back to the dugout. The top of the first ended on a run-saving play by shortstop Geraldo Perdomo on a 101.8 mph grounder from Realmuto.

According to the great Sarah Langs, Harper’s steal of home is the first in Phillies postseason history.

The following half inning, Harper made an excellent stop on a ground ball hit off the bat of Pavin Smith to end the inning and silence the crowd.

Both teams stayed off the scoreboard until the sixth. Gallen retired 11 straight from innings two through five. Wheeler allowed a single in innings three through five, but breezed through traffic rather easily.

A scary moment came in the fifth when Corbin Carroll ambushed a first-pitch fastball. He hit it deep, but Johan Rojas was able to make a basket catch just shy of the wall for the second out of the fifth inning.

Gallen’s streak of retired batters ended when Schwarber demolished a hanging curveball to make it 3-0. The ball traveled 461 feet and left the bat at 114.1 mph.

Harper one upped him two batters later with another monster solo shot. It didn’t quite go as far as Schwarber’s (444 feet), but he hit it harder at 112.4 mph.

As Todd Zolecki of MLB.com pointed out, Schwarber and Harper are tied with Jayson Werth for the most postseason home runs in Phillies history at 11.

Friday night’s hero Alek Thomas crushed a rare Wheeler mistake to put the D-Backs on the board in the seventh. Wheeler was able to limit the damage by inducing two fly outs. Sandwiched in between those two fly balls was an incredible stop by Stott on a quick one-hopper to get Geraldo Perdomo out at first.

Just as the D-Backs fans began doing the wave in the top of the eighth with their team only trailing by three runs, Realmuto delivered the knockout punch. A two-run bomb from the Phillies catcher put the Phillies up 6-1. It was the first multi-run Phillies homer of the Championship Series and the first since Harper’s dramatic three-run bomb against Bryce Elder in the bottom of the fifth inning of Game 3 of the NLDS.

The Phillies head back to Philadelphia with a 3-2 series lead and a chance to close out a second-consecutive National League pennant. Aaron Nola gets the ball against Merrill Kelly.

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