‘That’s why they gave us these contracts’: Wheeler, Harper, other Phillies millionaires (finally) produce
The Phillies' ace, their team MVP, as well as Kyle Schwarber, Trea Turner, and J.T. Realmuto show up just in time to avert a historic collapse and earn a playoff series against the Braves.
Before Sunday, the last time the Phillies won a baseball game, Zack Wheeler started. He dominated early and they beat the first-place Brewers.
The Phillies didn’t win again until Sunday, a game the Phillies had to win to ensure a fifth straight postseason berth. Wheeler started again. He dominated through his six innings.
Wheeler’s legend grew.
He helped avert the greatest collapse in Philadelphia sports history, and carried the rest of the franchise-record $330 million payroll with him. Most of that money pays Wheeler and four cornerstones of the lineup: two-time MVP Bryce Harper, three-time home run champion Kyle Scwharber, two-time batting champion Trea Turner, and two-time Silver Slugger catcher J.T. Realmuto.
» READ MORE: Phillies playoffs: Schedule, tickets, opponent, and everything else you need to know
Sunday, after a four-game slide recalled the horrors of the 1964 Phillies, all of the big names finally earned their money.
“We know who we are. You know who’s got to step up in big moments,” Wheeler said. “I mean, that’s why they gave us the contracts that they did. We got to play like it.”
After three straight years of dead bats in the playoffs, can they do this postseason what they did Sunday? We don’t know about the hitters.
We know about Wheeler.
It was Wheeler, more than anyone else, who earned the Phillies the third wild-card slot with a 7-3 win in the season finale over the visiting Rays. Surprise cleanup hitter Bryson Stott went 3-for-3 with a walk, but Wheels dealt six innings of one-run, five-hit, five-strikeout ball in the biggest game of the season.
“You see a game that he has like or today — he goes out there, he knows what the task is at hand, and he was able to rise to that,” Schwarber said.
The win earned the Phillies the No. 6 seed, lowest in the playoffs, which means a three-game, first-round series, all at No. 3 Atlanta. That begins Tuesday, with the winner headed to idle No. 2 seed Los Angeles over the weekend.
Marcus Hayes alerts
The Phillies have lost 11 of their last 17 games against playoff-caliber teams. That’s the main reason why, after holding a five-game lead for the final wild-card spot with eight games to go, they needed a win in Game No. 162 to guarantee a playoff spot.
Is there any real hope they make it to L.A.?
“We got a chip and a chair,” said Realmuto, a poker enthusiast.
Interim manager Don Mattingly was both more succinct and more vulgar:
“It doesn’t matter how you get in. You just gotta get in,” he told his team during their long-delayed, champagne-drenched clubhouse celebration. “And we’re [bleeping] in!”
There’s recent reason for optimism. With largely the same roster, the Phillies were the No. 6 seed in 2022, when they beat Atlanta in the playoffs and won the National League pennant. Wheeler was magnificent during that run.
He was just as magnificent Sunday.
Wheeler long ago locked up Comeback Player of the Year after missing the end of last season and the beginning of this season recovering from thoracic outlet syndrome. Sunday was his final argument, ending a season in which he allowed two runs or fewer in 20 of his 28 starts.
Wheeler is the highest-paid player in Phillies history, at $42 million per season. He earned his money Sunday, and has done so pretty much all season, especially down the stretch. Wheeler is 4-0 with a 1.67 ERA in his last six starts.
He has played to his pay grade.
His well-heeled teammates?
Not so much.
» READ MORE: Led by their stars, the Phillies are back in the playoffs. Anything can happen from here.
In the four straight losses that made Sunday so excruciating, Harper, Schwarber, Turner, and Realmuto were 10-for-59 with no home runs and two RBIs. None was great but Realmuto was brutal: 0-for-12 in those four games, part of an 0-for-33 stretch in his last 10 games.
On Sunday, that quartet went 6-for-18 with a home run, two doubles, and four RBIs.
Harper’s $330 million contract is the richest in franchise history. His homer Sunday, the 29th of his borderline elite season, stretched the lead to 5-1. Turner’s $300 million deal is No. 2. He batted leadoff and got two hits. Schwarber’s $30 million salary is second-highest in team history, and he singled, scored, and drove in two more runs with a double. Realmuto doubled and scored.
In the biggest of moments, this is what the top end of a $330 million payroll is supposed to do, said the man who signs the paychecks.
“I think the best competitors, the best players, are great competitors. If you’re a great competitor, you have the ability to rise to the occasion,” Phillies owner John Middleton said. “You have the confidence, but you know you’ve done it before, so you know you can do it again.”
Middleton is right. For all of the failure that has marred the Phillies’ last three playoff runs, many of the current principals have produced in big moments, most recently Game 3 of the NLDS last year against the Dodgers.
They did it again Sunday, and so now, for at least three more days and for two more games, the Phillies’ season will continue.
Harper doesn’t much care.
Simply making the playoffs has never been his goal. No, Harper wants to win a World Series. It is the only achievement lacking in his Hall of Fame career. It is the only accomplishment for this group that justifies the $1.4 billion Middleton has spent in the past five seasons.
“Obviously, the job’s not finished, right?” Harper said. “We’ve never been able to win that big one. I think this group — we need to do that.”
Let's talk about the Phillies' bullpen. Larry Andersen happens to be an expert on the subject. The popular Phillies radio analyst had a 17-year major-league career in which he appeared in 699 games – all but one in relief. He joins Phillies Extra to break down the biggest question standing between the Phillies and a long run through October: How will they bridge the gap to closer Jhoan Duran? Watch here.
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