Castellanos hit a two-run double in the ninth inning. (Photo by David J. Griffin/Icon Sportswire)
Final Score: Phillies 3, Twins 0
Entering the top of the ninth inning, the Phillies were stuck in a 16-inning scoreless streak. That streak looked like it would reach 17 when Jhoan Duran, one of the nastiest closers in baseball, stepped on the mound for Minnesota.
Fortunately, the slumping Phillies caught Duran on a night where his command was off and tagged him for three runs in the ninth to secure a 3-0 feel-good win. Bryce Harper led off the inning with a double, Alec Bohm and J.T. Realmuto worked a pair of close walks and Brandon Marsh drove in the go-ahead run on a sacrifice fly.
It felt like the Phillies needed a little more to feel comfortable in the bottom of the ninth and Nick Castellanos came through. With two strikes, Castellanos stayed on a 101 mph four-seam fastball right on the outside corner and drove it into the right-field corner for a two-run double to make it 3-0. Matt Strahm threw an easy 11-pitch inning and earned his first save of the season in the bottom of the ninth.
The game was there for the taking because Zack Wheeler was awesome.
He battled through a long first inning and threw seven shutout innings on 107 pitches with his best stuff. He struck out seven batters and allowed just three hits. In his first start since June with Realmuto, his preferred batterymate, Wheeler threw all six of his pitches at least 10 times. His best pitch of the night, the splitter, generated three swing-and-misses.
A combination of Jeff Hoffman and Gregory Soto walked three batters in the eighth, but the pinch hitter Ryan Jeffers hit into a slow bouncer to third to end the inning. The move to replace Hoffman with Soto seemed strange in a vacuum, but the Phillies are trying to push Soto into more high-leverage spots in order to evaluate his trustworthiness
Notes
After getting Austin Martin to ground out to Harper for the second out of the fifth, Wheeler officially reached 1,500 career innings. He is the 23rd active pitcher in MLB to reach 1,500 innings.
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