Shut Out in St. Louis, the Phillies Hand the Wheel to Wheeler

My dad used to say the toughest losses aren’t the blowouts. It’s the 2-0 nights, the ones where your team had chances, couldn’t cash them, and rode the bus back to the hotel wondering where the runs went. Tuesday in St. Louis was one of those nights, and if you’re a Phillies fan in South Jersey, you felt it.

Andre Pallante quieted the Phillies over six innings, scattering four hits and never letting Philadelphia get comfortable. The dagger came in the eighth, when Everson Pereira — a name most Phillies fans couldn’t have picked out of a lineup a week ago — turned on a pitch and sent it out for his fifth home run of the season. That made it 2-0 Cardinals, and against a staff that had the Phillies’ bats stuck in neutral all night, two runs might as well have been ten.

Why a Tuesday matters

The Phillies are in a wild-card fight, and every one of these games is a coin flip that lands on the standings. Philadelphia is still holding one of the three National League wild-card spots, sharing that crowded neighborhood with the Chicago Cubs and the Arizona Diamondbacks. But “holding a spot” in August is like holding a lead in the seventh — it only counts if you close it out. A shutout loss to a Cardinals team scrapping for its own October air doesn’t just cost a game. It tightens the rope. The frustrating part is the offense hasn’t gone cold everywhere. Kyle Schwarber walked into St. Louis on a five-game tear — hitting .444 over that stretch with two doubles, two home runs, six walks and six RBIs. On Tuesday, the rest of the order just couldn’t get on base in front of him or drive him in behind.

Now they hand it to their ace

So it comes down to a getaway-day rubber match, and the Phillies are handing the ball to exactly the man you’d want with a series on the line. Zack Wheeler takes the hill Wednesday afternoon carrying a 10-3 record and a 2.69 ERA into the finale against St. Louis right-hander Kyle Leahy. The Phillies have won 14 of Wheeler’s 19 starts this season. The one asterisk: Wheeler is coming off a clunker of his own — the Blue Jays got to him for seven hits and five walks in a one-run loss. Even aces have those days. The good ones make sure they don’t have two in a row.

That’s the beauty and the cruelty of a pennant race in August. There’s no coasting. Every afternoon is a referendum.Jake Sullivan

If Wheeler is right on Wednesday, the Phillies split the series and fly home with their wild-card grip intact. If he’s not, they leave St. Louis having dropped two of three, and the math gets a little more nervous. Wheeler’s got the ball. In South Jersey, we like our odds when he does.

Based on reporting from ESPN, MLB.com, The Washington Post, and Sports Illustrated.