Elle's Baseball Musings: It Took All 162
By Elle Elena ·
Sunday afternoon at Citizens Bank Park started the way a lot of important baseball afternoons do. The few seconds immediately before the first pitch. Scorebooks open in the stands. An old guy already marking balls and strikes like the season still had innings left to give. Then Zack Wheeler struck out the side in the first, and Philadelphia remembered how to play.
The Phillies beat the Tampa Bay Rays 7-3 on the final day of the regular season and clinched the National League's last wild-card spot. They finished 88-74. It is their fifth straight trip to October. It also took every one of the 162 games to get there.
Wheeler thought he was done for the regular season after he punched out 11 Brewers on Tuesday night. His next start was supposed to be Wild Card Game 1. Instead the late spiral shoved him into what the clubhouse treated as an SOS start: save our season. He answered with six innings, one run, five hits, zero walks and five strikeouts on a windy day after a nor'easter tapered just long enough to get the game in. He finished the year 14-5 with a 3.00 ERA and exactly 162 innings. Baseball is stupid. I love it. The innings total landing on 162 on Game 162 feels like the sport writing its own joke and daring you not to notice.
"This was like the playoffs, win or go home," Wheeler said afterward. "I was just pitching like it was win or go home. To see those guys get going gave me a little extra comfort out there on the mound of not having to be perfect with every pitch."
Interim manager Don Mattingly called it a Game 7. The offense finally backed that up. Philadelphia had hit .163 and scored three runs across the previous four losses. On Sunday the bats produced six extra-base hits. Bryson Stott's RBI double in the first gave the Phillies their first lead since Tuesday. J.T. Realmuto snapped an 0-for-32 skid with an RBI double. Kyle Schwarber added a two-run double in the second. In the fifth, Bryce Harper (his 29th homer, only his second in 27 games) and Edmundo Sosa went deep in the same inning.
Arizona still needed Sunday's combination of a Phillies loss and a Diamondbacks win at Petco Park. Philadelphia never gave them the first half of that equation. The Diamondbacks also lost 9-4 to San Diego and finished 86-76. The path they had kept open Friday closed for good.
"There are 162 games in a season and it took us 162 to get in," Harper said. "What does it matter? We wanted to do it two weeks ago and we should have. But, for me, I don't care. We got in."
After Wheeler, Mattingly turned to Alex McFarlane, Jesus Luzardo and Jhoan Duran. Luzardo came off the injured list earlier in the day and retired the side on four pitches in the eighth, touching 97 mph. Duran struck out Nick Fortes to end it. For a club that spent the whole week looking for one clean win, the bullpen chapter was almost a gift.
Next stop is Atlanta. Wild Card Game 1 is Tuesday afternoon at Truist Park against the Braves, who took nine of 13 from Philadelphia in the regular season. Harper pointed at Chris Sale waiting on the other side. Getting in was the whole job on Sunday. Playing better baseball than the Braves is the next one.
I keep coming back to those first few seconds before Wheeler's first pitch. The season had already spent almost everything. Scorebooks still open. An afternoon that refused to stay ordinary. Philadelphia finally took the breath it had been holding all week.
-Elle