It’s really hard to have any type of faith in the Philadelphia Phillies these days. Tonight, Zack Wheeler was on the mound for the Phillies, as they opened up a three game series against the San Diego Padres. As expected, Wheeler was dominant throughout, throwing 114 pitches over 7.2 innings, allowing just four hits, zero walks, and zero runs while striking out nine. On the season, Wheeler now has five scoreless starts of at least seven innings. No other pitcher has more than three. His ERA dropped to an incredible 2.05 on the year.

The Phillies got on the board early, scoring two runs in the bottom of the first inning on ground outs. First, was courtesy of JT Realmuto, followed by Bryce Harper. In the fifth inning, Didi Gregorius, who was back in the lineup for the first time since May 13th, extended the Phillies lead to three with a solo home run.

It’s almost comical to type this at this point, but I’ll do it anyways.

It was smooth sailing for the Phillies until the eighth inning.

Jose Alvarado entered the game and walked two batters. He lasted 0.2 innings, allowing a hit and three earned runs. Ranger Suarez pitched 1.2 innings and allowed the Padres to tie the game. With that, they blew their eighth save in the last nine games. To put that into perspective, the Indians have blown just five games all season. With the blown save, the Phillies now have the most blown saves by a team through the first 79 games of a season since the actual “save” stat was tracked in 1969.

Major problem in the Phillies bullpen. It’s hard to even blame Girardi on a night like tonight. There’s just zero options available to close out games right now. Luckily for the Phillies and my overall sanity, Brad Miller saved the game himself from the plate in the bottom of the 10th inning.

What was initially thought to be a three run home run turned out to be an RBI single. It didn’t matter. Miller celebrated and ran the base paths like it was and all things considered, a win is a win. The Phillies move back to three games under .500. They are 23-15 at home. Zach Eflin (2-6, 4.20) will be on the mound against Yu Darvish (7-2, 2.44) at Citizens Bank tomorrow.

Ring It. Happy 4th of July weekend.

Mandatory Credit: The Philadelphia Phillies