Zack Wheeler’s solid six innings, Bryson Stott’s homer highlight Phillies fourth straight victory under Don Mattingly

MIAMI — After hustling to cover first base on the final out of the sixth inning here Friday night, Zack Wheeler walked off the field alone.

It was a good time to reflect.

At the end of a week in which the Phillies saw their boss lose his job over a season-opening month that was unacceptable for the fifth-highest payroll in baseball, Wheeler delivered a strong start and the bullpen held on for dear life in a 6-5 cuticle-cutter over the Marlins.

So, the Phillies are 4-0, albeit against the lowly Giants and young Marlins, since they fired Rob Thomson and installed Don Mattingly as interim manager. But 4-0 is 4-0, and Mattingly Magic might be real.

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But Wheeler knows better than that.

The road back from a 9-19 start won’t run through a desperate move by the front office or managerial pixie dust. It will come down to the players on a $317 million roster, specifically an $81 million stable of starting pitchers that had a majors-worst 5.80 ERA through Thomson’s dismissal.

“I mean, you feel the pressure,” Wheeler said after holding the Marlins to one run. “We’re a really good staff, and we’ve got to pitch like it. They pay us for a reason. We’re, I want to say, the core in a sense. You know? It starts with us putting up zeroes and making that statement when we go out there.”

And look what they’ve done since Mattingly moved into Thomson’s office.

“It seems like over the past few years the starting pitching has been the strength, and there was times, obviously earlier this year, it wasn’t as good as you’d like,” Mattingly said. “But it’s starting to iron itself out.”

Bryson Stott struck the big blow for the offense with a three-run homer in the seventh inning. The snakebit second baseman came into the game with a career-high 43.7% hard-hit rate but only four extra-base hits and a .534 OPS.

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Surely, then, it was cathartic to see the ball land in the right-field bullpen for his first homer since last Sept. 24.

“Yeah, they can’t catch that one,” Stott said. “That one felt good.”

Stott provided a 6-1 lead that seemed safe until the bullpen got involved. The Marlins scored three runs in the eighth against Jonathan Bowlan and one in the ninth against Brad Keller, filling in for injured closer Jhoan Duran. But with the tying run on second base, Keller got Xavier Edwards to line out to center field.

And the Phillies exhaled, especially after X-rays were negative on Brandon Marsh’s right elbow, bruised by a pitch in the seventh inning.

Six nights earlier, when Thomson was still in charge, Wheeler made his grand return from surgery last September to treat thoracic outlet syndrome and came out firing in Atlanta. His first six pitches were all fastballs — and five registered at least 95 mph, faster than any pitch he threw in five minor-league tune-ups.

He lacked that power in his second start.

But it hardly mattered that Wheeler’s heater peaked at 94.7 mph in the first inning and sat mostly at 92-93. He dipped into his index of secondary pitches, throwing his splitter to lefties, his sweeper to righties, and introducing his curveball the second time through the order.

And he mixed them all better than a NutriBullet.

“My body felt great,” Wheeler said. “It just felt like my body was moving in slow motion a little bit, and I think that’s why the velo was down just a hair. But it felt great. I was still executing for the most part. I didn’t make too many mistakes.”

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The hardest-hit ball against Wheeler came in the first inning. Otto Lopez smashed what appeared to be a solo homer off leaping center fielder Justin Crawford’s glove. But a replay review revealed that the ball hit the top of the wall, then Crawford’s glove before caroming over the fence and was ruled a ground-rule double.

Lopez scored anyway one batter later on Edwards’ two-out double down the first-base line.

From there, it was vintage Wheeler, with the Marlins failing to get another runner into scoring position while he was in the game.

It was exactly what Wheeler said the starters expect.

“I think it’s understood, you know?” Wheeler said. “We have that standard with our staff of being the best in baseball, if not right up there.”

And it all starts with Wheeler.

Mattingly is still the newcomer around the Phillies. He got hired as bench coach before the season. But he recalled managing the Marlins against the Mets in which Wheeler followed Jacob deGrom in New York’s rotation.

“I’m like, ‘He’s better than deGrom,’“ Mattingly said. ”I mean, he was throwing bullets. A guy that’s coming back from what he had to go through last year, early in the season, velo’s going to keep ticking a little bit as we go. But he still gets swing and miss and knows what he’s doing.

“You feel like it’s just going to get better and better.”

In that case, the Phillies will, too.