Phillies Pirates Brandon Marsh

Phillies tag Paul Skenes for 8 runs, win 10-6 to improve to 11 games over .500 on the season

The Phillies put a career-high eight runs on the reigning NL Cy Young winner in four innings on Wednesday night at Citizens Bank Park because Paul Skenes has officially been figured out by this lineup and the guy who led the majors with a 1.97 ERA last season is now sitting at 6-8 with a 3.62 ERA while the Pirates are winless in his last nine starts.

Trea Turner crushed a three-run homer on a hanging breaking ball in the second, Brandon Marsh went deep for his 15th in the third, Harper doubled in two more in the fourth, and Skenes was showered and watching from the clubhouse before the fifth inning started because the Phillies treat this man like batting practice every time he shows up on the schedule.

The Phillies tagged Skenes for five runs in a 6-0 win in Pittsburgh back on May 17 and apparently decided that wasn’t enough because Wednesday’s eight-run, four-inning destruction was the kind of performance that should make the entire National League pay attention to what this offense has become over the last month.

The Phillies finished June with 18 wins, second-most in the majors, and scored 153 runs during the month, also second-best in baseball, from a lineup that was ranked near the bottom of every offensive category through April and May.

The offense isn’t just fixed, it’s elite right now, and Skenes found that out the hard way on a 96-degree night where every Phillies hitter in the lineup looked like they knew exactly what was coming before Skenes released the ball.

Bohm capped the scoring with a two-run homer in the ninth to push the final to 10-6 after the Pirates had cut it to a two-run game in the seventh before Kerkering shut things down with Harper and Bohm both making terrific defensive plays behind him and Duran closed it out in the ninth.

The Phillies are a season-high 11 over .500 at 49-38 with two of three against Pittsburgh already in the bag and everything about this team trending in the right direction heading into the final stretch before the All-Star break.

According to reports Zack Wheeler wasn’t happy about getting pulled

NBC Sports Philly is saying that Zack Wheeler was pissed at Mattingly for pulling him after 4 2/3 innings and 104 pitches with an 8-3 lead, one out shy of qualifying for his ninth win, and honestly I understand both sides of this but I’m going to come down on the side of “this isn’t a big deal and we need to move on.”

Wheeler struck out 10 batters and generated 23 swings-and-misses on a night where his command was unusually poor in the 96-degree heat and the pitch count ballooned past 100 before the fifth inning was over because he couldn’t put hitters away efficiently despite the stuff being nasty enough to produce the second-most whiffs of any start in his career.

He gave up three consecutive two-out singles in the fifth, two of them softly hit, and Mattingly pulled him at 104 pitches because the manager’s job is to protect his ace’s arm for the second half and the playoffs even if it costs Wheeler a statistical win in a game the Phillies were going to win regardless of who got the final out of the fifth inning.

Wheeler was agitated leaving the mound and admitted it after the game because the man wanted one more out to finish the fifth and clean up his own mess, which is exactly the competitive fire you want from your ace and exactly the reason Mattingly had to make a judgment call about whether competitive fire at 104 pitches in 96-degree heat was worth the risk of an injury that would torpedo the entire season.

Backhus came in and hit two batters, which charged Wheeler with an additional run and made the whole situation look worse than it needed to be, and Wheeler’s ERA climbed from 2.03 to 2.36 on a night where he struck out 10 and the team scored 10 runs.

Here’s my take on it. Wheeler has earned the right to be frustrated because he’s 8-1 with a 2.36 ERA through 13 starts coming off thoracic outlet syndrome surgery and he’s been the best pitcher on the staff all season.

He’s the kind of pitcher who wants the ball in every situation and being pulled one out short of a win in a game where he struck out 10 batters is going to bother a competitor at that level regardless of whether the decision was objectively correct.

Mattingly has earned the right to make that call because the man is 40-19 since taking over a 9-19 team and has managed the pitching staff, the lineup, and the bullpen with the kind of precision that has produced the best two-month stretch of baseball in recent Phillies history.

You don’t get to 40-19 by making bad decisions and pulling your ace at 104 pitches in 96-degree heat with a five-run lead is not a bad decision even if Wheeler disagrees with it in the moment.

This is going to get handled Thursday before the series finale because Mattingly is smart enough to address it directly and Wheeler is professional enough to move past it once the conversation happens.

If this is the first “crisis” of the Mattingly era then the Phillies are in fantastic shape because a manager and his ace disagreeing about one out in a 10-6 win is the kind of problem that every team in baseball would love to have compared to the actual crises that exist elsewhere on the roster like Nola’s 6.04 ERA and the bullpen’s tendency to blow leads every third game.

Stay Hot, Trea Turner

Trea Turner hit .216 through his first 71 games and looked like a completely different player than the one who won the NL batting title last season, and now he’s hitting .350 over his last 14 games with the three-run homer off Skenes on Wednesday being the latest example of a hitter who has found his swing at exactly the right time for a team that needs every bat in the lineup producing heading into the second half.

Trea Turner – RING IT

The adjustment has been about pulling the ball with more authority instead of rolling over on everything to the opposite field, and the hard-hit rate climbing from 38.5 percent during the cold stretch to 47.4 percent during the hot streak tells you the quality of contact has improved dramatically because Turner is finally getting to pitches on the inner half and driving them the way he did all of last season when he was the best contact hitter in the National League.

If the .350 Turner is here to stay for the second half then the Phillies have a lineup that can match up with anyone in baseball from top to bottom because Schwarber’s power, Harper’s heavy-bat surge, Marsh’s All-Star numbers, Turner’s turnaround, Stott’s hot stretch, and Bohm’s emerging pull-side power gives Mattingly a lineup card that has no easy outs from top to bottom.

All-Star Brandon Marsh

Marsh hit his 15th homer on Wednesday night and at this point the All-Star selection should be a formality because the man is hitting .322 with 15 homers, 44 RBI, and 48 runs scored through 81 games while playing elite defense in left field and carrying the Phillies’ lineup through every tough stretch of the season.

Marshy – RING IT

The All-Star banner in left field, Kruk and McCarthy in the fake beards on the broadcast, the “Marsh to the Polls” campaign, all of it is deserved because Marsh has been one of the five best outfielders in the National League all season and leaving him off the All-Star roster would be a crime against the game.

Harper driving in at least one run in seven consecutive games to overtake Schwarber for the team lead with 56 RBI tells you the heavy bat has completely transformed his approach at the plate and the two-run double off Skenes on Wednesday was the latest in a stretch where Harper has been one of the most dangerous hitters in the National League heading into the break.

The Phillies 49-38 and the NL East Is Right There

The Phillies are 11 over .500 for the first time all season after going from 9-19 and dead in the water to 49-38 with a legitimate shot at catching Atlanta before the All-Star break. Mattingly is 40-19 since taking over and the Phillies have won two of the first three against Pittsburgh with Rangel going Thursday in the series finale against Jared Jones.

The Wheeler-Mattingly disagreement will get resolved Thursday because both guys are professionals who care about winning more than they care about being right. The offense just put 10 runs on the defending Cy Young winner. The lineup is producing at the highest level of the season. Turner is back. Harper is rolling. Marsh is an All-Star. Schwarber has 30 homers. The Phillies are three games back in the NL East and playing their best baseball of the year.

One out of drama between the ace and the skipper isn’t going to derail any of that. Win Thursday, keep building, and head into the All-Star break playing like a team that belongs in October.

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