Category: Sports

A pivotal week for the Phillies begins in the desert with three games against the Diamondbacks that will have implications in the National League wild-card race.

It’s a good time, then, to check in with Arizona general manager Mike Hazen.

Hazen, nearing the end of his 10th season at the helm of the Diamondbacks, joined Phillies Extra to discuss several topics. Among them: the situation involving star second baseman Ketel Marte, who unexpectedly left the team a few weeks ago, went on the injured list with an inflamed knee, and was spotted at a Phoenix-area casino.

The Phillies begin the week with a 4½-game lead over the Diamondbacks in the wild-card race. And Marte is expected to return to Arizona’s lineup, spicing up a series that already has plenty of sizzle.

Hazen also recalled the Diamondbacks’ upset of the Phillies in the 2023 NL Championship Series, playing in the same division with the Goliath Dodgers, and more.

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

Q: The Phillies still have scars from the 2023 NLCS because not only did the Diamondbacks demystify that home-field advantage by winning Games 6 and 7 in Philly, but I think your scouts and your pitching people at that time also provided maybe a little bit of a blueprint for how to attack that lineup. I wonder about the effect of that series on your organization in terms of setting a course for going for it every year. How much did that series and that run shape you guys?

A: Not a ton. That’s been our mindset since we’ve been here. I mean, we won 52 games in 2021, and we were trying to compete that year. I think that sort of puts the exclamation point on how bad we were that season. We’ve never rebuilt since we’ve been here. We went for it in Year 1, made the playoffs in ’17. We were in first place in September of ’18, and just missed the playoffs in ’19. And then, obviously, kind of the world shut down for a couple years, and things kind of went into chaos there for a little bit for us.

We’ve gone for it every single year. That’s not going to change. We try to position ourselves to do that every year with regard to having enough young talent coming through to be able to use the payroll how we need to. Been very fortunate to get the money we have, but that series didn’t really change a ton for us. And with all due respect, I’m not sure that we had any sort of blueprint. We just had a bunch of guys that went out and played really good baseball and knocked off the Phillies that one time, and it was amazing. We still talk about it everyday because it was definitely a shining [moment]. We know what it was like to go into that stadium and be able to take two games from them — nearly impossible. I know nobody was giving us even a chance, and we respect what we were able to do.

The Phillies are perennially a great team, always have been for as long as we’ve been here. And they’re always going to be. They have superstar players — I don’t really know how you get Kyle Schwarber out. I’m not sure we have any type of blueprint to do anything like that. And now with [Brandon] Marsh and [Alec] Bohm and those guys starting to rake, that lineup is incredible. It always has been incredible, and they have incredible pitching, and they’re just a really talented team. … They’re well run, and they were built well. So they’re going to be as formidable as anybody in the race. We understand our challenges. We know where we stand in the pecking order, but we’re going to go out and fight right until the very end.

Q: There’s never a good time to have to deal with anything involving one of your best players, and frankly, one of the best players in the National League when he’s at his best. But how tricky is the timing of all of this coming with Ketel Marte as we hit the stretch run, and you’re jockeying for a wild card, and now you’ve got to navigate questions about some off-field stuff?

A: … I’ve spent a lot of time down there. I spend every minute with [manager] Torey [Lovullo] talking through a lot of these things. Again, we talk to the players. I think we all are resolved to focus on playing and winning baseball games. This team has dealt with … we’ve lost four of our five starting pitchers to start the season for the better part of the entire year. We’ve had enormous amounts of injuries of players being out. We’ve relied on half of our team on a given night as guys that started the year in triple A we had no intention of putting on our team. The guy that hit a walk-off jack last night [Ryan Waldschmidt] was in triple A starting the season with no real intention of not having him develop in triple A for the season, and that’s just the way the season’s kind of gone for us.

I’m not sure that there’s a lot that this team hasn’t had thrown at it that it’s not going to be able to respond to. I actually see it as a huge strength of what I’ve watched. I think Torey has kept the car in between the lines on the road, even though [there] have been constantly some errors — some unforced errors — some injury-related things that you just have to deal with, and every team has to deal with adversity. You don’t know about all the adversity all the other teams are dealing with. What were the Phillies dealing with when they made the managerial change? They were terrible. Now look at them. Every team has to deal with those types of things during the course of a season.

The teams that are able to respond to those things are the teams that are going to be able to … when the lights shine the brightest in the playoffs, those are the teams I think that have the most resiliency. And you remember back in ’23, we glorify it now in our walls … When we walked out of Philadelphia after Game 1 and 2, getting trounced in Game 2. I don’t think anyone was looking at that series like the Phillies had their backs against the wall and didn’t look like an unbelievable team. And you see how those things change. So those things happen. We had to go down 2-0 and face getting blown out in Game 2 and then recovering. It’s that type of resiliency that allows you to figure out ways to win in October, and we’ve had a lot thrown at us, so we’ll see where that takes us.

Q: Can you describe the challenge of going into every season looking up at the Goliath of our sport, the Dodgers, and knowing that you’ve got to go through them just to get out of the NL West?

A: I’m grateful for it, frankly. I don’t think you can truly understand the type of team that you can be until you have to go toe to toe with them all the time. We’re fortunate to have to do that. And the Padres as well. We’re fortunate to play in the division we do … people talk about getting to the playoffs. Fine, you want to win in the playoffs. I think you have to be able to go into Dodger Stadium and not get rattled. That you have to be able to do that. You have to be able to walk into Philly and not get rattled. Those people were standing for four straight games, never sat down, up or down, and you have to be able to deal with that. And if you don’t think that plays psychologically on players, not all the players, but some of the guys that you will be counting on in October, you’re crazy. It does. That effect is real.

And I think that you have to be able to handle those things in the most critical situations when things don’t bounce a certain way, and you have to be able to recover from that unfortunate event that happens. I feel like we get tested year in and year out, and there’s no excuses, and I like that. And I think ultimately, if we’re going to be successful and someday win the World Series, that’s going to be one of the reasons we do. … Yeah, it’s very challenging. I understand it. We understand it. The payroll disparities are the payroll disparities. There are some hidden advantages. It’s not a unilateral advantage. It doesn’t mean we can’t win, and we know that. So we go out there every day to compete, and we’re not going to back down from anybody.

ANAHEIM, Calif. — One fastball missed in. Another missed low, and a third missed way high.

As Zack Wheeler issued a leadoff walk to Angels outfielder Wade Meckler to start Sunday’s series finale, it appeared his recent troubles with command were back in full force. And when Los Angeles loaded the bases before the Phillies’ ace right-hander could secure an out, things already teetered on disaster.

But Wheeler found a way to battle back. It helped that Moisés Ballesteros chased a splitter down and outside to end a seven-pitch at-bat with a grounder up the middle. So did the fact that shortstop Trea Turner was in the perfect position to field it, touch second, and fire to first for a key double play.

“I think it just kind of settled him down, because those first few batters he wasn’t as sharp, and he looked really good in the bullpen,” said catcher J.T. Realmuto. “So I knew that once he got that double play, got out of it, I felt pretty confident that he was going to be himself today.”

The Phillies conceded one run on the play, but the first inning suddenly seemed much more manageable. And that turned out to be the only run Wheeler allowed as he went on to complete six innings in the 5-2 win over the Angels. Backed by another go-ahead home run from Edmundo Sosa, the Phillies pulled off the three-game sweep in Anaheim.

It wasn’t exactly perfect. Wheeler didn’t appear to have much command of his splitter throughout, and he issued three total walks. But he turned in six innings for the first time in more than a month as he posted a solid start to build upon, outside of the first three batters of the game.

“You know what he can be and what he can do, and this was a good start to head in that direction,” said interim manager Don Mattingly.

In his first seven starts after the All-Star break entering Sunday, Wheeler had a 7.18 ERA. His previous outing in Seattle had marked a new low, as he was charged with eight runs in four innings.

In the four days since then, Wheeler has been submerged in data and charts. He and the Phillies examined his biomechanics to try to identify what has been going wrong on a deeper level than just looking at traditional film.

“They have the balls of your joints, where you can see the smallest little difference,” Wheeler said.

What they found was that Wheeler’s glove was placed 2 inches further down in Seattle than it has been all year. And a graph of his glove placement over the season showed that it had been trending in that direction in the second half.

“So, what do we do? Just bring that front arm up a little bit, and go from there,” Wheeler said. “And you kind of got to sync everything else up off of that. Getting that front arm up, not kind of over-rotating, shooting towards the third-base on-deck circle. … Getting that weight over the back leg, and being more direct, rather than the rotational.”

It was actually the first pitch of the fourth inning — a fastball that Christian Moore took for a called strike — where Wheeler thought something clicked. It felt like the timing of everything had fallen into place.

Realmuto thought Wheeler’s four-seam fastball had more life again, and his curveball was also effective. In total, he allowed four hits, sidestepping a leadoff double in the third. Derek Hill helped him out with that, laying out to catch a line drive in center field and rob Ballesteros of a hit.

Wheeler started to tire in the sixth and wound up walking consecutive batters with two out. His pitch count had crept into the triple digits, but Mattingly decided to give him a shot to finish the inning himself against Angels right-handed hitter José Siri. Wheeler won another seven-pitch battle by going back to his curveball, which Siri whiffed on for Wheeler’s sixth strikeout.

Realmuto helped his batterymate by delivering the Phillies’ first hit and run of the game in the third. He sent a game-tying homer to the rock formation in left-center field of Angel Stadium.

The veteran catcher typically sits out on day games that directly follow night games, as part of the 35-year-old’s workload management. Realmuto caught 10 innings in Saturday night’s win.

But so long as he’s healthy, Realmuto wouldn’t typically miss catching a Wheeler start, no matter what happened the night prior.

“Other than the heat today, yeah, body felt fine,” Realmuto said. “We’ve done a good job this year, I think, of mixing my off days in at the right times. It’s time to go, because it’s that time of year where it’s time to start chasing the division.”

The Phillies’ offense mostly slumbered against lefty Yusei Kikuchi after Realmuto’s homer, until Sosa’s second big swing of the series. He followed up his go-ahead grand slam on Friday with a go-ahead solo home run in the seventh inning, turning on a splitter inside and depositing it over the left field wall to break the tie.

With Jonathan Bowlan and Jhoan Duran both unavailable — Bowlan had pitched two nights in a row and Duran pitched two innings Saturday — the Phillies were down their go-to high-leverage bullpen arms. Alex McFarlane, José Alvarado, and Orion Kerkering split the job in relief.

Another late outburst against the Angels bullpen gave the pitching staff some breathing room. Kyle Schwarber began the eighth-inning rally with a walk, before a Turner single and another walk to Alec Bohm loaded the bases.

Luis Arraez pinch-hit for Sosa against right-handed José Fermin, and drove in a run with a sacrifice fly to left field. Brandon Marsh cashed in another run with a pinch-hit single. In the ninth inning, the Phillies tacked on one more with an RBI double from Bryce Harper.

McFarlane recovered from a leadoff walk for a scoreless seventh. Alvarado secured two outs in the eighth, but left two runners on for Kerkering after back-to-back singles.

Kerkering did his job, securing a groundout from the right-handed Siri to end the threat. He returned for the ninth and conceded a run but ended the game with a strikeout.

It ensured that Wheeler was credited with his first win since July 12. He knows one start doesn’t necessarily mean the struggles are completely behind him, but he feels he has taken a step toward getting back to himself.

“He’s close. I’m sure he would tell you the same,” Realmuto said. “He felt closer to it today than he did his last start. And I know he’s working hard on it. We have all the faith in the world.”