Phillies crush the Fish thanks to Gabriel Rincones Jr. and Zack Wheeler
Gabriel Rincones Jr. was called up because the Phillies literally ran out of outfielders. Garcia tore his lat and Rojas blew out his UCL before playing a single game this season, which left the outfield depth so barren that the Phillies had to reach down to Lehigh Valley for a 25-year-old left-handed hitting rookie who had been hitting .215 across rehab assignments and had barely played 12 games at Triple-A after knee injuries wiped out his spring.
Monday night the emergency option walked up to the plate in the second inning against Marlins righty Ryan Gusto, worked the count down 1-2, fought off three straight pitches to stay alive, and then got a hanging 82 mph sweeper that Gusto left up in the zone like he was asking for it.
Rincones turned on it with a one-handed swing and hooked a skyscraper down the right-field line that landed in the seats at Citizens Bank Park. First big league hit. First big league homer.
Welcome to Philadelphia, kid.
Gabriel Rincones Jr. RING IT
This Kid Is Built Like a Lab Experiment
Sometimes the guy you bring up because you have no other choice turns out to be the guy who crushes hanging sweepers into the seats on his first big league swing. In 329 career minor league games, 43 of Rincones’ 45 homers have come against right-handed pitching with an OPS above .800 in every season since 2023.
The lefty bat against righties has never been the question. The health has been the question and Monday night the health cooperated long enough for the bat to do what it’s always done.
Rincones said after the game that he’d been dreaming about this exact moment. “You dream about that. I tried to think about what it would feel like, what would I see, smell, and it was very similar.”
The kid had rehearsed his first homer in his head so many times that when it actually happened it felt like a memory he’d already lived. That’s the kind of mental preparation that tells you a player belongs at this level even before the results confirm it.
Wheeler Threw Six Scoreless and Had the Audacity to Say He Wasn’t Sharp
Zack Wheeler went six innings, gave up two hits, struck out nine, and lowered his ERA to 2.01 against the Marlins on Monday night. His response when asked about the outing was “just inconsistent” and “not as sharp as what I’m used to.”
The man threw six scoreless innings with nine punchouts and three walks against a Major League lineup and called it a mediocre night because that’s the standard Zack Wheeler holds himself to while the rest of the pitching world is trying to figure out how to get through five innings without giving up four runs.
Wheeler at 36 years old after thoracic outlet surgery is putting up the best numbers of his entire career with a 2.01 ERA that sits right behind Sanchez’s 1.82 on the Phillies’ leaderboard and a 0.85 WHIP that would be third-lowest in baseball and a career-low mark.
Anyone who spent the offseason worrying about whether Wheeler would come back the same pitcher after that procedure can officially shut up because the man is better than he’s ever been and he’s complaining about command on nights where he throws six shutout innings.
Wheeler credited Realmuto for navigating the night when the command wasn’t there by calling more splitters and backdoor cutters than usual, which is the kind of pitcher-catcher chemistry that wins games in October when nothing else is working.
The Cy Young conversation keeps swirling around Misiorowski and Sanchez but Wheeler is lurking right behind them and anyone who leaves him out of that conversation isn’t paying attention.
Two Cy Young-caliber arms on the same staff giving the Phillies a chance to win 40 percent of their games before anyone else does anything productive, and when Luzardo is right on the road that jumps to 60 percent. That’s a rotation that can carry a team deep into October regardless of what the offense does.
Phillies Offense Actually Showed Up and It Wasn’t Just Rincones
Crawford had three hits, Marsh collected two, Sosa added two, and Realmuto crushed his second homer in the last few days while continuing to look like a completely different hitter than the one who started the season slow.
Every part of the lineup contributed in a game where the Phillies had the lead from the second inning on and never let the Marlins sniff the scoreboard. Seven runs on a night when Wheeler was dealing is the kind of cushion that this team has rarely provided its starters all season and it made for the most stress-free win in weeks.
The Marlins are terrible and everyone knows that. You don’t get style points for beating Miami but the Phillies just came off a .500 road trip where they got one-hit by Misiorowski and watched Sanchez have his worst start in two months in Milwaukee.
Coming home and dropping a 7-0 beating on the Marlins with a rookie homering in his first game and Wheeler dealing six scoreless is exactly the kind of palate cleanser this team needed before the All-Star break push.
Turner Got Drilled and That Might Be the Best Thing That Could Have Happened
Turner took a 96.9 mph fastball off the right wrist in the sixth inning and left the game with a contusion. X-rays came back negative and Mattingly said he’ll “probably be sore” with a wait-and-see approach for Tuesday. Turner went 0-for-3 before the HBP and his average sank to .216.
I’m not wishing injury on anyone but if the wrist contusion gives Mattingly the cover to sit Turner for a day or two without it being framed as a benching, that might be exactly the break everyone needs right now.
Turner has been hitting .216 all season with a .269 OBP from the two-hole and the coaching staff has clearly been trying to figure out how to give him a reset without making it a national conversation
A wrist contusion that keeps him out Tuesday and maybe Wednesday gives Turner time to breathe, lets the wrist heal, and gives Mattingly the ability to point to the injury instead of the batting average when explaining why the shortstop is on the bench.
Sometimes the universe provides. If Turner comes back from a day or two off and starts hitting even .240 for the rest of June, the HBP was worth more than any batting cage session could have been.
Rincones in a Platoon Could Actually Work
The Phillies plan to use Rincones in a straight platoon in right field, starting him against right-handed pitching where his entire career has been built. Forty-three of 45 minor league homers against righties tells you everything about where his bat plays and the Phillies are smart to put him in positions where the matchup favors his left-handed swing rather than throwing him out there against lefties where the numbers don’t support it.
Having a left-handed bat with legitimate power in the platoon against righties gives the lineup something it hasn’t had in the right-field spot since Garcia went down. If Rincones can produce even a fraction of what his minor league track record against right-handed pitching suggests, the bottom of the order gets deeper in a way that makes opposing pitchers work harder through the entire lineup instead of cruising through the seven, eight, and nine spots.
The trade deadline is still coming and Dombrowski still has work to do because Rincones alone doesn’t fix everything wrong with this roster. But having a left-handed power bat step up in an emergency situation and launch his first career homer at Citizens Bank Park on his first swing is the kind of development that gives the front office a little more breathing room to make the right move instead of a desperate one.
Rincones said his goal is simple. “Setting the table for those big guys and putting together great at-bats against great competition. I’m the new guy around, and I want to supplement these guys.”
Keep swinging like Monday night and you’ll be supplementing this lineup all the way to October, kid.
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