Category: Phillies/MLB

Say this for the Phillies: They are, more or less, who we thought they were.

It wasn’t the path that everyone expected. But after a 9-19 start that got the manager fired, they are back in possession of a wild-card spot in the National League with a relatively soft schedule until the All-Star break.

And they’ve done it on the strength of their pitching.

Caleb Cotham is in his sixth season as pitching coach. He recently joined Phillies Extra, The Inquirer’s baseball podcast, to discuss Cristopher Sánchez’s emergence as the best lefty in the National League, Zack Wheeler’s wildly successful return from thoracic outlet syndrome, Andrew Painter’s rookie-year struggles, and more.

Watch the full interview below and subscribe to the Phillies Extra podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Q: Cristopher Sánchez recently went 50⅔ innings without allowing a run, the longest streak by a left-handed pitcher since at least 1893. How much did you actually talk about the scoreless streak with him? And what was it like going through it with him?

A: Yeah, we never talked about it. I think that probably sums him up as good as anything. I never noticed a difference [in him] from my perspective. Because it’s so good in his work; it’s so good in catch play; it’s so good in how he interacts with his teammates, how he shows up on non-start days in the dugout — he’s engaged in the game; how he treats his bullpens; how he treats his pregame; the routine on the table in the training room, the weight room. I never noticed a difference.

So, I think that it was kind of ho-hum for me. It was business as usual. And in the back of my head you know that that’s something, especially once it becomes pretty real. But I think the most impressive part of that for me — obviously not giving up runs for that length is the most impressive thing — but from a process standpoint, not even sniffing out a difference. Yeah, there’s a little bit [of a difference], just kind of [how] he fought to finish innings here and there. OK, that’s a little different for a third inning in this game. But for the most part, it was just kind of Sánchy doing Sánchy, and it got to a point where I didn’t know if he’ll ever give up a run.

Q: If I told you in the offseason that we’d be sitting here in the second week of June and Zack Wheeler would be pitching like this after what he went through last season with the thoracic outlet syndrome and the surgery and everything else, what would your reaction have been?

A: I’d be pretty thrilled. Zack knows himself so well, and he knows his game, he knows what his kind of shortcomings are, what his strengths are. He’s got [catcher] J.T. [Realmuto] back there. I think there’s now six years where I know Zack, and there’s a catalog of cues and feels and things we’ve talked about and worked on. So, I think you know that’s all thrown into kind of the cauldron. But Zack’s the linchpin.

It doesn’t surprise me that he’s back to kind of the [pre-surgery] competition level. It is very impressive that the stuff is where it’s at. I think the velocity is one thing, but also just the pitch shapes, like the splitters. The splitter is arguably as good as it’s ever been, movement-wise. The sweeper has been very good. He’s thrown last couple starts some of the better curveballs he’s thrown. The cutter was kind of a pitch he didn’t quite have early in the year; it’s gotten better lately, even though he threw a really good one [last week in Toronto] that a guy put a good swing on. But just the skill of the pitch shapes and controlling movement, I think that, to me, is incredibly impressive because the feel aspect and him not walking guys. His walk rate right now is as low as it’s been. Last year was a really good year, and it’s low again.

I still think there’s another level for him. I think he has another level he can go to, which happens every year anyways. But I think the people around him and his dedication — he has a very high desire to be really, really good; it bothers him to not be good. So, from that aspect, I’m not surprised. But it’s still very, very impressive, and it’s not easy. He makes it look very easy, and it’s not.

Q: What’s the message to Andrew Painter right now? Because it sounds like the focus with him is really just on throwing strikes.

A: It might not feel that way, but he has thrown strikes. I think he’s 80th-percentile [in] walk rate, breaking into the big leagues this year with ABS [the automated ball-strike system]. To me that’s very impressive. It would be way easier to walk more guys … it’s easier now than it ever has been to throw balls. The zone’s very small. There’s a way hitters can turn those borderline pitches that are called [strikes] into balls, so I think from that perspective he’s done pretty good. He’s held the zone.

His superpower is he can land a bunch of offspeed for strikes, but it’s kind of just inside that, what’s the level 1.5? I think being out of the zone with two strikes is something we’ve talked about a lot. That speaks to the K-rate. I think he’s getting a lot of opportunities at striking guys out, he’s just not quite finishing them. And it’s not always about the swing and miss on the heater. Sometimes it’s just bouncing a breaking ball when you need to. I think if you do that, you pose a little bit bigger problem to the hitter. Then, they’re a little more apt to miss the first fastball. But I think, specifically to the fastball, his ability to pitch down in the zone, throw strikes at the bottom, to not show them the up [above the zone] quite as much will maximize his chance to get a swing and miss when he needs to go up.

… if you throw the fastball up, up, up, up, up, their eyes have seen it, the foul ball turns maybe into a ball in play, and kind of cascades up the damage hierarchy. And that foul ball might turn into whiff if it’s the first time they saw it. So, I think just a little bit of hiding the ball from the hitter, not showing them the best location, and to me that’s control of the zone and control of height. But I think he has thrown strikes, he’s not walking them, but he’s not [striking them out] as much as we think he can, and I think he will. That just comes from a little bit of experience.

I think he’s held his own. There’s been games where he’s lost his zone, and the feeling on the mound where you don’t quite know where it’s going a little bit at times. That’s a pretty lonely feeling. And what I know about Paint is that he has fought through those outings. He threw 40-42 pitches in the first inning the other day [in Toronto], and he found a way to get into the fifth. That’s impressive to me, and that’s going to be something that’s going to help him long term.

Right away, Gabriel Rincones Jr. knew it was gone.

He let the bat flip off his fingertips as he started toward first base. Miami right fielder Owen Cassie made a futile jog toward the wall, but the ball kept carrying and carrying until it landed just inside the foul pole, Rincones’ first major league hit and home run all at once.

“I daydreamed about that, and tried to think about what it would feel like, what would I see, smell,” Rincones said. “And it’s very similar. I had a whole routine in my head with what I could possibly do, and thank God I was able to do that.”

The rookie outfielder debuted Friday in Milwaukee when he and the rest of the Phillies were baffled by Brewers star Jacob Misiorowski. But in his first start at Citizens Bank Park on Monday, Rincones made his presence felt in the 7-0 win over the Marlins.

It’s been a whirlwind few days for the right fielder, and it hasn’t all sunk in yet.

“I process things really slow,” Rincones said jokingly. “It doesn’t help — that atmosphere vs. one of the best pitchers in baseball, I had a crazy travel day, going out to Milwaukee, pretty bad weather there at the time. But I got good sleep today and was able to do my thing.”

Rincones’ solo homer in the second inning gave the Phillies an early lead they would not surrender as they pounded the Brewers for 10 hits. Every starter reached base at least once. That included Trea Turner, who was 0-for-3 before getting hit by a pitch in the sixth and was later removed from the game with a bruised right wrist.

Interim manager Don Mattingly said Turner’s X-rays were negative, but he is sore.

Phillies starter Zack Wheeler tossed six scoreless innings, even though he said postgame he was unsatisfied with his command.

“I think that’s something that makes him so special,” said catcher J.T. Realmuto. “He has very high standards for himself, and he doesn’t feel like he’s perfect. He feels like it’s not his best stuff, but he continues to go out and just give us quality innings and gives us a chance to win every time he steps on the mound.”

A leadoff single to Liam Hicks was the only hit he allowed until Joe Mack doubled in the fifth inning, but both times Wheeler battled back to strand the runner. He also pitched around three walks to hold the Marlins off the scoreboard.

“It’s a tightrope,” Wheeler said. “Just got to walk it fine and get outs. You put yourself in that situation, so you got to get out.”

Wheeler leaned on his splitter and cutter more than normal, and collectively those two pitches generated nine of his 12 swings-and-misses.

“I think those are probably the two pitches that kind of saved me today,” Wheeler said. “You sprinkle in everything else, but those two pitches really worked for me today.”

He struck out nine, four of which were called looking.

While there were offensive contributions up and down the Phillies lineup, it was the bottom of the order that consistently came through.

Rincones picked up another RBI in the third inning to add to the Phillies’ lead. With the bases loaded, he grounded into a force out that scored a run. Justin Crawford followed it up with a single that made it 3-0.

“The second at-bat I liked from the standpoint of putting the ball in play there,” Mattingly said. “Where he controlled the zone enough to get himself a pitch to put the ball in play, got us an extra run.”

Realmuto then swatted a two-run homer in the fifth, his second home run in as many games after he had the day off on Sunday.

“It’s important for any team to be able to have a deep lineup, and that’s something we feel like we put together here, is being able to score up and down the lineup,” Realmuto said. “We haven’t obviously done that all season long, but we feel like when we’re at our best, we can score at any point, doesn’t matter who’s hitting. So it’s good to see us score some runs the last few games with the bottom half.”

The Marlins threatened the shutout in the eighth when they put two runners on against Jonathan Bowlan with an error and a single to bring up the heart of the order. But Bowlan struck out back-to-back Marlins — Kyle Stowers on a fastball and Xavier Edwards on a changeup — to end it.

The bottom of the order started another rally in the eighth when the Phillies loaded the bases on consecutive singles from Crawford and Edmundo Sosa and then a walk from Kyle Schwarber. They tacked on two more runs with two sacrifice flies to make it 7-0.

If it had remained a five-run game, Mattingly said he likely would have used a higher-leverage arm in Orion Kerkering for the ninth, but the extra cushion allowed him to bring in Chase Shugart instead. Shugart sidestepped a single to seal the shutout.

“Those kind of runs, they don’t seem huge during the course of a game because it’s 5-0,” Mattingly said. “But it’s really big from the standpoint of bullpen usage, who’s available tomorrow and the next day, so those are big runs at the end.”

After his second-inning homer, Rincones jogged back out to his position on defense, past where it had landed. He tipped his cap to the fans as they greeted him with an ovation.

With Adolis García’s season likely over following a right lat tear, the Phillies have a need, and Rincones has an opportunity.

He knows it.

“I don’t want this to get familiar,” he said. “I want it to be like it’s a new feeling, and that fire, I don’t want that to go away. And I want to give these fans all that I got.”

MILWAUKEE — In the midst of it all, as Bernie Brewer barreled down his slide and another sold-out crowd roared, Cristopher Sánchez bowed his head.

It turns out the Phillies’ ace is fallible after all.

Who knew?

One out from escaping the fourth inning here Sunday, two days after Brewers rival Jacob Misiorowski pitched the best game in baseball this season, Sánchez gave up a backbreaking three-run homer to .113-hitting Blake Perkins on a slider, his third-best pitch.

That’s one way to beat Sánchez. Here’s another: Start a left-hander against the Phillies, held to three hits by Kyle Harrison and four overall in a rubber-game 4-0 loss to the powerhouse Brewers.

“Everything was off today, especially my energy,” Sánchez said through a team interpreter. “I’d say it wasn’t as it usually is. But not to use it as an excuse.”

Hmm. That’s odd. It was one of those measuring-stick series — for the Phillies against a National League heavyweight, and for Sánchez in the middle rounds of what’s shaping up as a Cy Young Award fight with Misiorowski, who submitted a one-hit, 15-strikeout shutout Friday night.

Why, then, the low energy?

“I didn’t have the best sleep last night,” Sánchez said. “I think it’s only that. But no excuses again.”

OK, so the Cy Young race won’t be decided in June. But after permitting a total of five runs and one homer in 59⅔ innings over his previous eight starts, Sánchez gave up four runs and two homers against the Brewers, hiking his ERA from 1.54 to 1.82.

(Misiorowski leads the majors with a 1.34 mark.)

“A little bit uncharacteristic,” interim manager Don Mattingly said. “Just velo was down a touch, and with that, it gives [the hitter] a little more time up there. Other than that, you take the homer away, just a breaking ball there, even when it doesn’t look like he has his best stuff, he’s still hanging in there.”

Oh, about that breaking pitch. Sánchez has baseball’s best changeup and a bowling-ball sinker. But Rafael Marchán called for a slider in a 1-0 count to Perkins. Marchán, who left the game in the eighth inning and was going through concussion protocol, was catching Sánchez for only the third time this season.

“I felt good with calling that pitch at that moment,” Sánchez said. “It just stayed in the middle. I hung it. But at the moment that we called it, I felt good with it.”

Said Mattingly: “I never question what pitch he’s throwing or picking. They’re all good. It’s just a ball that he kind of left up. He tried almost like a get-me-over-breaking-ball, and the guy hit it.”

The Phillies didn’t do much hitting against the Brewers’ top starters. Misiorowski and Harrison bookended the series by allowing a total of four hits in 15 scoreless innings.

Harrison became the latest left-handed pitcher to mute the Phillies’ bats. Three of their seven shutouts this season have come against left-handed starters.

Trea Turner, in particular, continued to struggle. The star shortstop went 1-for-13 with six strikeouts in the series — 3-for-26 with 10 strikeouts overall on the road trip.

For the season, he’s batting .219 with a .599 OPS.

“Definitely frustrated,” Turner said. “It feels like I’m just missing every pitch I could possibly miss no matter what I try, approach-wise, physically, mentally. It feels like it’s just not getting the job done.

“I feel like the last two or three weeks I’ve been getting pitched really well, and then this series, finally I felt like I got some pitches to hit in the middle of the zone and just fouled them all off. So, that’s what I’m most frustrated with.”

Would it help if the Phillies dropped Turner from the No. 2 spot in the order to relieve some pressure?

“I haven’t really thought about moving him at all,” Mattingly said. “I don’t really know what the answer to moving him down is. Somebody’s going to have to hit there. Not sure who that would be right now.”

Onward, then. The Phillies are 38-33, 29-14 under Mattingly, but only 3-9 against the Brewers, Dodgers, and Braves, the cream of the NL crop.

As measuring sticks go, the Phillies surely must have learned something from three days in Milwaukee?

“I don’t think we played our best,” Turner said. “To come out with a win, I think, is kind of a positive outlook at it. I think we all think we could’ve played a lot better in all three games, but that’s what happens if you don’t show up against these good teams. They beat you.”