Maybe the best evidence Zack Wheeler gave the Phillies on Sunday wasn’t the 95.4 mph fastball.
Maybe it was the one run.
Because the first inning had every ingredient for another disaster.
Wade Meckler walked. Mike Trout got hit. Vaughn Grissom singled. Three Angels reached before Wheeler recorded an out, five days after Seattle had knocked him around for eight runs, nine hits, four homers and five walks in one of the ugliest starts of his Phillies career.
This could have gone sideways quickly.
Instead, Wheeler caught Moisés Ballesteros’ grounder, started a 1-6-3 double play and struck out Christian Moore.
One run.
That was it.
And maybe that was the most encouraging part of the Phillies’ 5-2 win over the Angels on Sunday, completing a three-game sweep at Angel Stadium and closing a remarkable stretch of August baseball.
Wheeler wasn’t flawless.
He was Wheeler again.
There is a difference.
He worked six innings, allowed four hits and one run, walked three and struck out six. The victory was his first since July 12 and snapped a seven-start winless stretch. It was also his first quality start since July 21.
Considering what came before it, those six innings mattered.
Wheeler entered Sunday having posted an 8.38 ERA with 15 walks over his previous four starts. Monday in Seattle represented the bottom: eight earned runs in four-plus innings as Cal Raleigh and the Mariners turned mistakes into batting-practice souvenirs.
Sunday wasn’t a return to dominance so much as a return to problem-solving.
The data told that story.
Wheeler threw 108 pitches and used all six of his offerings. Half were four-seam fastballs, averaging 95.4 mph — actually a tick above his season average. But this wasn’t simply a matter of reaching back for more velocity. The Angels put 15 balls in play against him and only two qualified as hard-hit. Their average exit velocity was just 78.6 mph.
His curveball was particularly useful. Wheeler threw 11 of them and generated five whiffs. His sweeper produced four whiffs on eight swings. Overall, he induced 15 swings and misses.
The most important came after pitch No. 100.
Wheeler walked consecutive hitters with two outs in the sixth, bringing José Siri to the plate with the Phillies and Angels tied at 1. He fell behind 2-0.
This was the kind of inning that had become a problem lately.
Wheeler stayed in it.
Seven pitches later, with his 108th and final offering, he buried an 80 mph curveball and struck out Siri swinging.
That felt more revealing than any radar-gun reading.
The Phillies know what Wheeler looks like when everything is working. They have watched that version for years.
October, however, does not always provide that version.
Sometimes the fastball command disappears for an inning. Sometimes two runners reach. Sometimes 100 pitches arrive before six innings do.
The ability to prevent those moments from becoming three-run innings is part of being an ace, too.
Philadelphia eventually rewarded him.
J.T. Realmuto tied the game with his 10th homer in the third. Edmundo Sosa — because apparently one ninth-inning grand slam wasn’t enough for one weekend — broke the tie with his seventh homer in the seventh. Luis Arraez added a pinch-hit sacrifice fly and Brandon Marsh a pinch-hit RBI single in the eighth before Bryce Harper doubled home Realmuto in the ninth.
Sosa’s weekend deserved its own suitcase.
His grand slam won Friday’s opener. His homer supplied Sunday’s go-ahead run.
But the larger number was four.
This was the Phillies’ fourth sweep of at least three games this month, something they had not accomplished in a calendar month since August 1991. They finished Sunday 20-7 in August and have won 13 of their last 15, reaching a season-high 17 games over .500.
Thirty-five years is a long time between months like this.
And yet, with September arriving, the Phillies probably needed Sunday’s development more than another historical footnote.
Cristopher Sánchez is pitching like a Cy Young candidate. Jesús Luzardo just overwhelmed Seattle. Andrew Painter has begun showing signs of what the Phillies always imagined.
But their October rotation becomes something entirely different if Wheeler is Wheeler.
Sunday didn’t settle that question.
It did something better than pretending there was never a question at all.
Wheeler loaded the bases before recording an out. He walked two more when his afternoon was almost finished. His pitch count climbed. Nothing came particularly easily.
And the Angels got one run from him.
After the month Wheeler had been having, that might have been the most familiar thing about him.
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