Phillies thump the Mets, 7-5, to move to the brink of clinching a postseason berth

It rained all morning and into the afternoon Saturday, up and down the East Coast. Major League Baseball postponed one game in Washington and another in New York. Surely, Philadelphia had no chance.

And then, inconceivably, Tropical Storm Ophelia abated for three hours or so, as if to yield to the Phillies’ march to October.

Oh, the wind kept whipping — 19 mph at the 4:08 p.m. first pitch, from right field to left. It was raw and nasty, hardly baseball weather, even by late September standards. Any ball in the air was an amusement-park ride.

But Zack Wheeler wore short sleeves to the mound. Bryce Harper scorched three balls 104 mph or harder, including a home run off the facing of the second deck in right field. And the Phillies beat the Mets again, 7-5, and moved to the brink of clinching the wild card that has been an inevitability for weeks.

“The way we’re playing right now is pretty good,” Harper said after the Phillies’ fourth consecutive win and seventh in nine games. “When we had a chance to clinch and get into the postseason, we talked about just worrying about our stuff, worrying about the team in here, not anybody around us. Just trying to get our job done, because if you don’t win, it doesn’t really matter.”

For the record, the Phillies’ reduced their playoff-clinching magic number to two. They can lock up a wild card as soon as Sunday night, if Ophelia permits, with another win over the Mets combined with a Marlins loss to the Brewers or a Cubs loss to the Rockies.

But the Phillies also have all but wrapped up the No. 4 overall seed in the National League and a home series in the best-of-three wild-card round. At 86-69, they can finish 2-5 in their last seven games, and the Diamondbacks would have to go 8-0 to overtake them.

Unlike last season, when the Phillies stumbled down the stretch, including a late-September sweep at Wrigley Field, they’re zooming to a drama-free finish.

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“Last year was a little closer than we would like, so just want to win as many games as we can,” Wheeler said. “Just care of what we need to, and that’s winning games and controlling what we can control. Just win.”

“They’re playing well,” manager Rob Thomson added.

Harper’s 20th homer of the season — 17 of which have come since the All-Star break — and Nick Castellanos’ triple on a liner to left field that eluded Jeff McNeil helped the Phillies get even in the second inning after spotting the Mets a 2-0 lead.

Then, one night after notching a 10th-inning walk-off single, Alec Bohm busted a 2-2 stalemate with a solo homer in the third inning. The Phillies scored three runs in the fifth on a rally keyed by Harper’s two-out, two-run single.

But this was the most important part: By squeezing in the game between the rain, the Phillies assured that Wheeler will be in line to start Game 1 of the wild-card series on Oct. 3. He prefers to pitch on four days’ rest, so the Phillies will flip him and Taijuan Walker next week. Wheeler will start Thursday in the home finale against the Pirates.

Five days after that, it will be Game 1 of the wild-card series.

“It’s huge,” Harper said. “Any time you can set things up to have your best guys going, that’s always good, especially in a three-game set against whoever it’s going to be. Any time you can have your No. 1 guy going, it’s huge for us.”

Wheeler lacked his peak fastball velocity but spotted it well and mixed in sweepers, sliders, and sinkers to keep the Mets honest. Through six innings, he allowed only a pair of unearned runs on an error by Trea Turner. He gave up three runs in the seventh but wasn’t helped by a rare misjudgment by Johan Rojas on a liner to center field.

In all, Wheeler completed seven innings on 99 pitches.

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“I didn’t feel terrible, but I didn’t feel great,” he said. “Just grinding. That’s all it really was. I was trying to make my pitches best I could and just keep my pitch count down and go.”

Gregory Soto and José Alvarado slammed the door in the eighth and ninth innings, respectively, at which point the rain began to pick up slightly.

It didn’t matter. By then, the Phillies were shaking hands. Pretty soon, they’ll be popping champagne.

Playing in his 1,000th career game, Turner stole his 30th base, reaching the mark for the sixth time in his career. But he also made a defensive gaffe that allowed two runs to score.

Turner got handcuffed by Brett Baty’s grounder, enabling DJ Stewart to score from second base. When left fielder Kyle Schwarber retrieved the ball and relayed it to Turner, the shortstop hesitated momentarily, allowing Ronny Mauricio to race home from third.

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In the seventh inning, Rojas made an uncharacteristic poor read on Nimmo’s line drive to center field. He broke in on the ball, which sailed over his head. Nimmo was credited with a triple.

“The line drive right at the center fielder is tough, depth perception-wise,” Thomson said. “He kind of came in on it. He should’ve stayed where he’s at and let the ball tell him where to go. We talked to him about it, but that is a very difficult play.”