Topper down, Wheels flat: Rob Thomson, Zack Wheeler, Phillies fade in Game 2 of the World Series

HOUSTON — If you’re going to lose, do it right.

Show up flat. Emotionally spent. Throw a bunch of meatballs, kick it around, and give it away from the bench.

Then fly back to Citizens Bank Park, where the most raucous crowd in baseball lives and feeds, and go get ‘em come Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Tied 1-1, home field advantage disappeared as quickly as the velocity on Zack Wheeler’s fastball.

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“This club, it’s really got a short memory. And I expect them to come in there and be ready to go in front of a rabid fan base,” manager Rob Thomson said. “They’re going to flush it and move forward.”

They lost Game 2 at Atlanta and never returned to Georgia. They lost Game 2 to San Diego and never went back to Cali.

H-town, you might have seen the last of the Phils.

They seemed purged.

Seriously. If your ace is going to give up three doubles on four pitches to start Game 2 of the World Series, let the calamities rain. Get them out of the way. It’s a seven-game series. Consider it something like a juice cleanse.

Or, in this case, a 5-2 enema.

Let your first baseman fail to pick a low throw that cost you a third run in the first inning, then watch their first baseman make a clean pick on an identical throw later in the game. Rhys Hoskins couldn’t pick up Edmundo Sosa, but Yuli Gurriel saved Alex Bregman in the fourth, no problem.

Get the leadoff man on in the fifth and sixth innings, when suspiciously lubricated Astros starter Framber Valdez finally looks shaky, then ground into double plays to quash the threat. Valdez was the target of suspicion all night, partly because his evil repertoire was cooking, and partly because he kept touching unusual parts of his equipment and personage (as usual), giving the impression of doctoring the baseball. Twitter sleuths were certain he cheated.

Thomson seemed unconcerned.

“If there’s something going on, MLB will take care of it,” Thomson said.

And, if you’re going to get rolled, make sure you let your hapless starter dangle in the fifth inning like a tethered goat. Bregman, the Astros’ cleanup hitter, proved to be the tiger that devoured that tree-bound bait. With Wheeler flagging in the fifth, Bregman bashed a 405-foot, two-run home run off a lazy slider that hung like a piñata at a quinceañera.

The slider was the sort of pitch you usually see from a $50,000 batting-practice coach who’s goofing around, not a $118 million perennial Cy Young candidate.

Then again, Wheeler didn’t look like an $18 pitcher, much less a $118 million pitcher. The Phillies didn’t start him in Game 1, which would have been a normal four days of rest, in order to give him extra time to recover from pitching the clinching Game 5 of the NLCS. Wheeler’s ERA was 1.07 runs better in 2022 when pitching with the extra day.

He looks like he needs an extra month.

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His fastball velocity, which usually hovers around 97 or 98 mph, remained 3 or 4 mph lower. His slider lacked bite. He was, literally, historically bad. He now is the first pitcher to give up extra-base hits to the first three batters he faced in a World Series game.

Was he tired? Or was he injured? Either way, he never looked right Saturday.

“Everything’s fine, as far as I know,” Thomson said.

Wheeler didn’t complain.

Wheeler wasn’t the only Phillie on fumes. The lineup, top to bottom, looked spent Saturday night.

Even bash brothers Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber didn’t have their normal pop.

In the eighth, Schwarber hit a homer that was, then wasn’t. It was clearly outside of the right-field foul pole, but was called fair by the right-field umpire, then ruled foul by the congregated umpires, then challenged, and ruled foul for good. Schwarber then lofted a fly ball to the warning track that died 5 feet short of relevance.

It was that kind of night. Harper, who’d hit in 11 straight, was 0-for-4.

Their absence of energy might’ve been rooted in their 4-hour, 34-minute, 10-inning slog into the wee hours of Saturday morning — the wee hours in Philadelphia, anyway. Game 1 began at 8:04 p.m. EST, ended after midnight back in Philly, and the boys might’ve had a hard time sleeping after all the excitement that was J.T. Realmuto’s game-winning home run.

» READ MORE: The Phillies, America’s team, win Game 1 with J.T. Realmuto’s hits and Rob Thomson’s guts

If Realmuto’s regulation double and overtime homer provided the brawn in Game 1, then Thomson provided the brains. He got 17 scoreless outs from his relievers Friday. He needed at least 14 from his bullpen Saturday, too, because Wheeler had no business throwing a single pitch after he struck out Jeremy Peña with a runner on in the fifth.

He would be facing American League MVP candidate Yordan Álvarez, a left-handed hitter; then Bregman, the cleanup hitter; then Gurriel, who entered hitting .382 in the playoffs. The bullpen was completely available.

But no. Thomson said afterward that the fifth was Wheeler’s, no matter what: “It was his inning.”

So Thomson stayed with his ace, who wasn’t really an ace Saturday night, and the team paid for that decision.

That’s OK. Nobody’s right all the time.

Not even Canadians.