In Game 1 hero Zack Wheeler, Phillies have one of baseball's best pitchers

Tuesday night wasn’t a perfect performance by the Philadelphia Phillies.

They stranded runners on second and third with no outs in the first inning. They gave away another run in the fourth inning when Nick Castellanos was gunned down at home plate. They briefly let their opponent back in the game in the seventh due to a fielding miscue. There were many moments that, in a parallel universe, could have helped lead to an upset Game 1 loss at the hands of the pesky Miami Marlins.

In this one, however, the Phillies have Zack Wheeler, one of the best starting pitchers in baseball. And as a result, they barely broke a sweat, cruising to a 4-1 win.

Wheeler most likely won’t get any Cy Young votes this winter; that’s what a 3.61 ERA will do for a starter. But make no mistake: Wheeler remains one of the best in the business. He led all MLB pitchers this season in WAR, per Fangraphs’ public model. He struck out 212 batters, good for ninth in all of baseball. And this was all in a down year. We’re talking about a pitcher who has a stellar 3.06 ERA ever since agreeing to a five-year, $118 million contract with the Phillies — a deal that looks destined to go down in franchise history as one of the best free agent contracts they’ve ever signed.

This year, Wheeler may not have gotten the hype of other National League pitchers like Blake Snell (the five-inning wonder), Justin Steele (who has nowhere near the extensive track record of success as Wheeler) or Spencer Strider (same). But he’s still just as good as all of them.

He reminded the baseball world of that fact on Tuesday night.

Against the Marlins, he was vintage Wheeler. He delivered first strikes to 19 of the 24 batters he faced. He allowed just two truly hard-hit balls all night long — a Luis Arraez lineout in the first inning before he fully settled in, and a Josh Bell double just as fatigue appeared to finally be taking its toll in the seventh. Through four innings, Wheeler had thrown just 46 pitches, while his counterpart Jesús Luzardo needed 90 to get through his four frames. After six innings, Wheeler had faced just one more Marlin than the necessary minimum of 18.

In other words, Wheeler carved up the Fish like he was a chef in a seafood restaurant, and had he not had a momentary lapse in fielding judgment in his final inning, he finishes this one with seven innings of scoreless ball in the Phillies’ playoff opener.

Instead, he’ll have to settle for 6.2 IP, one earned run, and the win. He’ll surely manage.

It’s not like Wheeler’s performance should come as a surprise, of course. Across six postseason starts in 2022, Wheeler posted a stellar 2.78 ERA, including a one-hit gem to kick off the NLCS in winning fashion on the road in San Diego, and set the tone for the rest of that magical series. Even in Wheeler’s two “bad” starts in the World Series, he allowed only nine hits in 10.1 innings, and left Game 6 with a 1-0 lead, only to watch Jose Alvarado promptly allow a three-run homer to Yordan Alvarez just after Wheeler left the game.

What happened on Tuesday night is just what Wheeler does — he takes apart opposing hitters in the playoffs with his 98-mph fastball and vast array of breaking balls (the sweeper did the most damage against the Marlins). With batting champ Arraez clearly hobbled and only Bell coming anywhere close to seeing the ball well? Miami didn’t have a chance.

Had Wheeler not been in peak form, there were opportunities for the Marlins to shift the game in their direction. After all, the Phillies probably should have scored five or six runs in this one, given the constant pressure they placed on Luzardo from the start, and the Miami defense as a whole. The combination of third base coach Dusty Wathan choosing to halt Kyle Schwarber at third base in the first inning on a potential Alec Bohm sacrifice fly to right field — immediately followed by a particularly horrid at-bat by Harper — screamed “they’re going to regret that one later.”

Without Wheeler, maybe Harper — who went 0-for-3 to kick off the game — is remembered as the goat. Or maybe it’s Wathan, who also came up empty in the fourth when he green-lit Castellanos’ ill-fated jaunt to home plate.

But the best part about having elite starting pitching is that it gives potential goats time to rewrite their stories. That’s what happened with Harper, who blew through an eighth-inning Wathan stop sign after apparently deciding that tonight just wasn’t the third base coach’s night when it came to decision-making, adding a key insurance run in the process.

In fact, the most remembered visual from Tuesday — if the Phillies do indeed go on another magical playoff run — will likely be Harper purposely knocking off his helmet between second and third to streamline his unsanctioned dash home. Harper will always have a flair for the dramatic, and even if the bullpen ultimately didn’t need the extra run to successfully close out Game 1.

But Harper — highlight reel play notwithstanding — was only a secondary hero this time. It was Wheeler who carried the load, Wheeler who gave his teammates a chance to find their footing, and Wheeler who is the biggest reason why the Phillies are just one win away from steamrolling into the NLDS.

That’s exactly what one would expect from one of baseball’s elite pitchers.