Once I laid out a possible path to a Marlins upset within the NL Wild Card Collection, it began with Jesús Luzardo hanging with Zack Wheeler. The 33-year-old righty has been the most effective starters in baseball over his tenure with the Phillies, whose run to final yr’s pennant was largely the results of a procession of dominant Wheeler begins. However Luzardo is a wonderful pitcher himself; maybe a participant of his youth and expertise may increase his recreation within the largest begin of his life.
Luzardo didn’t pitch badly by any means, however on Tuesday night time in Philadelphia, there was merely no hanging with Wheeler. I’ll listing his stats right here, however they don’t do the efficiency justice: 6.2 innings, 5 hits, no walks, one run, eight strikeouts. The Phillies gained, 4–1, and now have a stranglehold on a collection they have been closely favored to win from the beginning.
“I believe the story was Wheeler,” mentioned Marlins supervisor Skip Schumaker. “He was glorious tonight. The sinker/sweeper mixture gave us bother. Lots of weak floor ball contact…. He was simply glorious.”
Wheeler’s dominance was the results of two components. First, he was forward within the depend on principally everybody, all night time: 19 first-pitch strikes for twenty-four batters confronted. After operating Josh Bell 3–0 with two outs within the first inning, he didn’t get into one other three-ball depend till he confronted Nick Fortes within the sixth. In between, he fell behind 1–0 to a few out of 14 batters; in every of these circumstances, the following two pitches have been strikes, and he retired the batter in query. These three 1–0 counts represented the one pitches Wheeler threw behind within the depend throughout that point.
“I believe your OPS goes down a pair hundred factors if you’re 0–1 in comparison with 1–0,” Bell mentioned. “He doesn’t stroll a ton of individuals… I’m certain he wasn’t making an attempt to make errors everywhere in the plate, he was making an attempt to make corners.”
It’s all the time simpler to pitch from that advantageous place. All of the extra so for Wheeler, whose sweeper was practically unhittable.
“That was the perfect the sweeper’s been,” he mentioned. “That was a giant pitch for me tonight. I simply had an excellent really feel for the place to begin it and what it was going to do. It did the identical factor each single time, irrespective of if I threw it up or down.”
We discuss rather a lot about having a fastball-breaking ball mixture that appears comparable out of the hand however has such totally different velocity and motion that the batter can’t presumably cowl for each. The Marlins put some swings on Wheeler’s sweeper that made me assume they couldn’t have hit it even when they’d recognized he was coming. Right here’s Jon Berti, lacking a 1–2 sweeper within the third inning by greater than the size of his bat:
Zack Wheeler, Depraved Sweepers. ?
fifth and sixth Ks. pic.twitter.com/p66Y7n0Xdb
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) October 4, 2023
A swing like is sufficient to make an individual resent his ancestors for climbing out of the ocean hundreds of thousands of years in the past, rising lungs and arms, and finally placing him on this unenviable place.
“He locates it effectively and may throw it to each side of the plate,” Marlins third baseman Jake Burger mentioned. “He retains you trustworthy along with his different pitches, too. For lefties, it’s a cutter, for righties, a four-seamer. There’s a motive he’s the most effective within the recreation.”
The Marlins threatened towards Wheeler within the sixth and seventh innings as he drained, however even then they couldn’t fairly sq. him up. Miami’s 5 hits included two ground-ball singles that sneaked beneath the gloves of Trea Turner and Bryson Stott, plus two infield singles, each on bang-bang performs. A kind of was partially the results of inexperienced and overexuberant first base play from Bryce Harper, who laid out for a Burger grounder however left his bag uncovered; Stott needed to maintain the ball till Wheeler may scramble over to the bag, however by then it was too late. The fifth hit was a scalded seventh-inning double by Bell, who scored the Marlins’ lone run of the night time.
“He’s acquired such a whippy arm and electrical stuff,” Bell mentioned. “He was positively on tonight.”
Wheeler has now made three dwelling playoff begins in his profession, all Phillies wins. In 19.2 innings he has 24 strikeouts, a 1.37 ERA, and simply 11 baserunners allowed.
“I simply really feel like I’m doing my job, actually. That’s why I got here right here, and that’s why the Phillies signed me, to pitch like I’m,” he mentioned. “ It’s been a enjoyable trip. Making it to the postseason, there’s nothing prefer it. I simply attempt to do the very same factor, however I believe my adrenaline and the whole lot comes up and it simply performs a tiny bit extra, and typically that helps you.”
Bell was the one hitter who may get a bead on Wheeler or anybody else, going 3-for-4 with two doubles (the second got here off Craig Kimbrel). He additionally drew Wheeler’s solely 3–0 depend and accounted for 3 of the 4 batted balls he allowed with an exit velocity of over 100 mph. Bell’s first double additionally gave him the excellence of turning into the primary Marlin to achieve second base towards Wheeler — within the seventh inning.
By that time, the sport wasn’t fairly out of attain; when the Marlins lastly chased Wheeler, the tying run was on first base. That’s as a result of Luzardo, beneath stress a lot of the night time, by no means let the dam break.
“It’s clearly an awesome lineup stuffed with veterans, so that they know tips on how to grind guys out,” he mentioned. “Like, they did simply that, they floor me out. [They weren’t] as aggressive as they normally are, not chasing a lot, simply making me come within the zone.”
The 26-year-old lefthander scattered eight hits and didn’t permit a house run or a stroll, however he was continually beneath stress. He threw first-pitch strikes to simply 10 of 19 batters and wanted 90 pitches to get by means of 4 innings; by that point, each Phillies place participant besides Harper had recorded a success.
“I assumed the first-pitch strike simply wasn’t there tonight,” Schumaker mentioned. “Normally it’s, and that’s when he can get to his actually good slider. He simply didn’t have the command like he normally does the primary few innings. The pitch depend ran up on him within the fourth, and we needed to get him out of there.”
The Phillies may’ve put the sport out of attain early, however they handed up alternatives to attain. Within the first inning, with runners at second and third and no person out, third base coach Dusty Wathan held Schwarber on a 276-foot flyout to Jesús Sánchez in the fitting area nook. Schwarber, who had led off the primary inning with a single, was finally stranded on third.
“You must watch out there as a result of Sánchez can throw,” Phillies supervisor Rob Thomson mentioned. “It was slightly bit offline. By our experiences, he’s a extra correct thrower than that throw there. And also you’ve acquired Harper coming to the plate, so that you’d higher be sure that, with the catch making the primary out, you’d higher ensure that man’s going to be standing up on the plate.”
Philadelphia misplaced one other potential run within the fourth when Nick Castellanos, making an attempt to attain from second on a single to heart area, was lower down on the plate after an excellent throw from Jazz Chisholm Jr. and an arguably even higher tag by Fortes. By the point the Phillies put that remaining insurance coverage run on the board within the eighth, after a Castellanos double, it was as a result of Harper blew by means of Wathan’s cease signal and beat the throw to the plate. (As a matter of basic follow, Harper treats cease indicators the way in which Texas drivers deal with pace limits.)
“He’s simply so aggressive, and he needs to win,” Thomson mentioned. “He needs to attain. It’s not like I inform him, ‘Hey, if any individual tells you to not run, go forward and run if you wish to.’”
It’s a microcosm. Harper and his confreres couldn’t fairly put the Marlins away, letting them dangle round till issues acquired legitimately nervy. However when the time got here, they only wouldn’t be stopped. Now this workforce, which entered the collection as a 3-to-2 favourite, has an 81% probability of advancing. Wheeler was the story in Recreation 1; the following chapter, in all chance, will happen in Georgia.