After a slow start to the season, the Philadelphia Phillies have a simple — and obvious — goal under interim manager Don Mattingly.
“We’ve got to win ballgames,” right-hander Zack Wheeler said after the Phillies defeated the Marlins 6-5 on Friday night in Miami. “You can’t get too far behind. The Braves are a really good team, and they’re already a good bit ahead (in the National League East). So we’ve got some catching up to do, but we’re playing better baseball right now. And like I said, it starts with the staff.”
The Phillies will aim for their fifth consecutive win on Saturday afternoon when they meet the Marlins in the second game of a four-game set. The four wins have come under Mattingly, who took over when Philadelphia manager Rob Thomson was fired Tuesday amid a 9-19 start to the season.
Wheeler, in just his second start this year, held the Marlins to one run over six innings. Bryson Stott and Alec Bohm — two veterans who have struggled — came up with big hits.
“There are so many guys with track records here that you know are going to hit,” Mattingly said.
And pitch.
“It seems like over the past few years the starting pitching has been the strength, and there was times, obviously earlier this year, it wasn’t as good as you’d like,” Mattingly said. “But it’s starting to iron itself out.”
Miami’s Otto Lopez enjoyed a big night, going 3-for-5 with two runs and two RBIs. The Marlins attempted a late comeback, as they rallied from a 6-1 deficit with three runs in the eighth and another run in the ninth, but their late surge fell just shy.
“We see with the group, day in and day out, they will just continue to hang in there,” Marlins manager Clayton McCullough said. “We came up short, but I loved how we were able to finish that one off.”
Now the Marlins will take aim at Philadelphia starter Andrew Painter (1-2, 5.25 ERA), who will look to rebound from a bumpy start his last time out.
In his fifth major league outing, the 23-year-old right-hander gave up a career-high five runs in 5 2/3 innings in a 5-3 loss to Atlanta on April 24. Painter allowed nine hits, walked two batters and struck out only one of the 28 batters he faced.
Painter actually had things under control — two runs allowed through five innings — before giving up three runs in the sixth.
Painter will face the Marlins for the first time. His counterpart, right-hander Max Meyer (1-0, 3.30 ERA) has pitched against the Phillies only once, allowing five runs in 5 1/3 innings in his major league debut in 2022.
Fast-forward to the current season, and Meyer has yielded three runs or less in all six of his starts. He gave up just an unearned run in five innings Sunday against the San Francisco Giants. The Marlins lost 6-3, and Meyer took a no-decision.
In essence, Meyer’s last start was the opposite of Painter’s, as McCullough pulled Meyer after five frames despite a relatively low pitch count (77).
“I thought Max had done his job, gotten us through five. We thought we had the right combination of guys to get to (closer Pete Fairbanks), but the game quickly turned on us,” McCullough said.
–Field Level Media
–Field Level Media
