Astros jump on Zack Wheeler and the Phillies to even the World Series 1-1 heading to Philly

HOUSTON — As the longest season of his life kept extending into the second and third and fourth weeks of October, Zack Wheeler approached each start more like Olympic sprinter Usain Bolt might tackle a distance race.

Go as fast as you can for as long as you can.

Through his first four postseason starts, Wheeler threw a total of 112 pitches at 97 mph or faster, most of which came in the first or second inning. Never mind that the Phillies ace’s velocity often dipped in the fifth or sixth. If he was running on a higher octane at the beginning of games, well, as pitching coach Caleb Cotham said this week, “Just go until you can’t go.”

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But Wheeler came out throwing 95 mph Saturday night in Game 2 of the World Series. And not only that, he didn’t throw as many fastballs as usual. The Astros pounced. They hammered three doubles on Wheeler’s first four pitches, raced to a lead, and cruised behind lefty Framber Valdez to a 5-2 victory that evened the best-of-seven series with Game 3 set for Monday night in Philadelphia.

“Sometimes it happens,” Bryce Harper said.

Maybe so. And the Phillies did leave Texas having achieved a split with the next three games at Citizens Bank Park. Of the 61 previous times that the World Series was tied, 1-1, the winner of Game 2 has won the series only 50.8% of the time.

If the rest of the series is a coin flip, the Phillies surely will take their chances.

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But there was something troubling about all this. Because Wheeler is the Phillies’ rock, their pitching version of Harper. He had a 1.78 ERA in the National League playoffs with a 0.51 WHIP that ranked as the lowest ever in a four-start span in a single postseason. He gave up a total of five runs in four starts against St. Louis, Atlanta, and San Diego.

The conspiracy theorists will have their say about why Wheeler gave up five runs in one night in Houston. The easiest explanation will be that he’s pitching through an injury stemming from the line drive that ricocheted off the inside of his left knee in Game 5 of the NL Championship Series last Sunday.

“No,” Wheeler said flatly. “It hasn’t been a problem.”

It would almost be more comforting to the Phillies if it was.

Stick a pin in that. We’ll get back to it shortly.

Wheeler gave up three runs in the first inning, two on the back-to-back-to-back doubles by Jose Altuve, Jeremy Peña, and Yordan Alvarez and one that was aided by shortstop Edmundo Sosa’s throwing error. In the fifth, he allowed a two-run homer to Alex Bregman.

The Phillies were in a 5-0 hole for the second consecutive game. This time, there would be no comeback. Not against Valdez. The Astros’ 17-game winner flummoxed the Phillies with his signature sinker and especially his curveball. He got nine swings and misses on his breaking ball and didn’t allow a runner into scoring position until the sixth inning.

“I haven’t seen a curveball break like that in a minute,” Nick Castellanos said.

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It was so good, in fact, that social media buzzed with videos that suggested Valdez might have been loading up the ball with a foreign substance. The umpires didn’t find anything in their in-game checks, and Phillies manager Rob Thomson didn’t ask them to look harder.

“The umpires check these guys after almost every inning,” said Thomson, who admitted the Phillies noticed Valdez rubbing on his hand. “If there’s something going on, MLB will take care of it.”

Absent answers about Valdez (his curveball or reason for switching his glove between innings), Game 2 boiled down to Wheeler.

“They were just aggressive, and I left those first two balls right over the heart of the plate,” Wheeler said of a sinker to Altuve and curveball to Peña before Alvarez banged a slider off the left-field wall. “That’s what a good team does with it. I tried to match their aggression and get off the corners a little bit more, and they just came out swinging and the balls were right down the middle.”

Wheeler’s fastball velocity averaged 95.6 mph, in line with his season average. But he maxed out at 96.9 mph, flashing none of the 98s and 99s that he showed six days earlier against the Padres.

It wasn’t even the velocity. Of Wheeler’s 69 pitches, only 15 (22%) were four-seam fastballs. He threw his heater an average of 41.9% of the time during the season. Against the Astros, Wheeler was more of a sinker-slider pitcher.

“He was just a little off,” Thomson said. “It was a little bit light stuff, and location was a little bit off. I think everybody deserves a poor start every once in a while.”

Wheeler conceded this week that his knee was “sore” for a few days, but it was “more of just like an in-the-moment thing where it really hurt.” The Phillies gave him extra rest rather than starting him in Game 1 on Friday night, but insisted it was because he has been more effective on five days’ rest than four, not because of his balky knee.

In that case, the question is this: What if Wheeler has hit a wall? He suggested as much Saturday night.

“It’s just late in the season,” Wheeler said. “It’s a bad time for it to happen, but yeah, I mean, it is what it is.”

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Wheeler led the majors last season with 213⅓ innings, dealt with shoulder soreness last winter, began the season on time despite not making a start in spring training, and pitched until the middle of August when he missed five starts with forearm tendinitis that evolved into elbow inflammation.

Upon returning Sept. 21, Wheeler made his final three regular-season starts, building his way back to 77 pitches. Tack on 30⅓ innings and a total of 414 pitches in the postseason, and, well, it’s been a haul.

“He’s probably feeling a little bit of the downtime and the on-ramp,” Cotham said this week, referring to Wheeler’s progression back from the monthlong shutdown. “He’s just giving everything he’s got. I think that plan is right. It’s like, just go until you can’t go.”

If Wheeler goes again this season, it would be in Game 6 on Friday night back in Houston.

The Phillies have to get there. Then, they have to hope their ace has some fuel left in the tank.