Gabriel Rincones Jr. emerges, Zack Wheeler efficient as Phillies return home with 7-0 win over Marlins
Trea Turner was hit by a pitch in the sixth inning and was removed in the eighth with a bruised right wrist.
Right away, Gabriel Rincones Jr. knew it was gone.
He let the bat flip off his fingertips as he started towards first base. Miami right fielder Owen Cassie made a futile jog towards 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 versus 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.”
Say this for the Phillies: They are what we thought they were, a playoff contender led by two aces atop the starting rotation and a dominant closer. Pitching coach Caleb Cotham joins "Phillies Extra," The Inquirer's baseball podcast, to discuss the state of the Phillies' pitching, from the success of Cristopher Sanchez and Zack Wheeler to the struggles of Andrew Painter. Watch here.
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