SAN FRANCISCO — It’s always tough to lose, but it’s especially tough to lose Zack Wheeler starts. Especially when those Zack Wheeler starts are, well, Zack Wheeler-esque.
Wheeler was his typical self on Tuesday night in San Francisco, but the Phillies’ offense could not provide any backing. Luis Matos’s walk-off sacrifice fly in the 10th inning broke a scoreless tie and sent the Phillies to their second straight series loss — and their ninth straight defeat in San Francisco, dating back to 2021.
The Phillies have scored 16 runs in five games on their current road trip. Six of them came in one inning.
“That’s baseball,” manager Rob Thomson said postgame. “It’s the ebbs and flows of the game. This club’s gonna hit. We’re just going through a rough patch right now. So we’ve gotta come in here tomorrow and get after it again.”
Wheeler and the Giants’ bullpen provided quite the pitchers’ duel. The former Giants prospect, who was traded to the Mets for Carlos Beltrán in 2011, surrendered two hits and two walks in six dominant innings, striking out nine. Orion Kerkering, José Alvarado and Jeff Hoffman then kept the Giants at bay to send the game to extras, in which Matt Strahm couldn’t quite navigate around the zombie runner.
“I thought [Wheeler] was fantastic,” Thomson said. “First-pitch strikes were good, stuff was good. 98 in the first inning. That’s really good stuff. All our pitchers threw well. They really did.”
But five San Francisco arms shut the Phillies down in return.
One of those five was Spencer Howard, the former top Phillies prospect who was dealt to Texas in the 2021 Kyle Gibson (and Ian Kennedy) trade. Howard’s stints with the Phillies, then the Rangers and the Yankees, did not go well. But the Giants selected Howard from Triple-A Sacramento in anticipation of the bullpen game, and he looked more like that former top prospect against his former team.
Howard went four innings, the longest outing of the night for Bob Melvin’s squad, allowing five hits and striking out four, with no walks. “He filled up the strike zone pretty good,” Thomson said. “He did a good job.”
Howard’s biggest problem in Philadelphia was his inability to maintain velocity into and past his third inning of work. His first fastball on Tuesday night was 94.9 mph. His last, on pitch 47, was 94.4 mph. Only three fastballs were below 93.
It was the matchup every Phillies fan wanted to see, if only for the cinema. It seems Howard wanted it, too — and the rest of the Giants’ bullpen wanted in on the party. It was all too much for the slumping Phillies to handle. Even with the zombie runner on second in the top of the 10th, they came up empty.
“We just didn’t get it done,” Thomson said of the extra-inning struggles at the plate. “That’s gonna change, too.”
One play perhaps loomed larger than the rest. J.T. Realmuto had doubled to lead off the sixth against Howard. Bryce Harper then grounded a ball to Brett Wisely, shaded near second base, and Realmuto took off for third. Wisely made the play and threw on the run to nab Realmuto at third.
Bryson Stott went 0-for-4. After hitting .383 in the first 19 days of May and raising his average to .279, he’s now 2 for his last 28. He fouled a ball off his ankle in the ninth. Thomson said he thinks Stott is OK, but he’ll be checked on Wednesday.
The National League East margin shrunk by a game on Tuesday. Losers in four of five, the Phillies are 38-18.
Ticket IQ Next Game
- Wednesday, May 29 vs. San Francisco Giants at Oracle Park
- 3:45 p.m. ET
- TV: NBC Sports Philadelphia
- Radio: SportsRadio 94 WIP
- Spanish Radio: WTTM 1680
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