Rob Thomson: ‘No chance’ Zack Wheeler starts Game 4 for Phillies

This is why winning the Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola games are so important, and why winning the Ranger Suárez game last week in Atlanta helped turn the tide and give the Phillies the advantage.

There will be pivotal games Friday and Saturday night inside Citizens Bank Park, series-deciding games, and the Phillies can’t feel terribly comfortable about the pitching situation in either of them.

Blowing a 4-0 lead Wednesday in San Diego means the Phillies will need at least one — maybe two — victories from a pitcher not named Wheeler or Nola.

The first man up is Suárez, who will throw in his second career postseason game 10 days after going just 3⅓ innings in a 7-6 win in Game 1 of the NLDS in Atlanta. He’ll be opposed by Padres righty Joe Musgrove, who had a 2.93 ERA and 1.08 WHIP in 181 innings during the regular season and has surrendered just two runs in 13 innings in two postseason starts. He’s struck out 13 and walked four.

Suárez, on the other hand, walked five in Atlanta and threw just 46 of his 86 pitches for strikes. That start came on the heels of a three-inning outing during the last series of the regular season in Houston. That night, Suárez was blasted for six runs on seven hits while walking two.

Advantage: San Diego, at least on paper, though the Phillies did touch Musgrove for six runs in six innings in a June game.

Suárez said he thought the extra rest will benefit him Friday night.

“All I want to do tomorrow is be better than my last time out and really help this team win,” Suárez said through an interpreter.

He said he knows the importance of going deeper, too.

“The more I pitch, the more I’m going to save the bullpen for the next day,” Suárez said.

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Game 4 Saturday might be an all-hands-on-deck affair, maybe for both teams. Thomson said Thursday there is “no chance” Wheeler starts Saturday night on short rest.

He didn’t announce a Game 4 starter Thursday, but said the obvious, that it would be one of Noah Syndergaard, Kyle Gibson, or Bailey Falter. It will depend, he said, on how Friday goes.

Padres manager Bob Melvin also didn’t name a Game 4 starter. The Padres used Mike Clevinger the first time they needed a fourth starter in this postseason, and Clevinger was shelled for four earned runs on six hits in 2⅔ innings in a 5-3 loss to the Dodgers.

Adding another layer to both managers divvying up innings is the lack of a day off for travel between Game 5 and a potential Game 6 back in San Diego.

“Each day will dictate how the next day goes,” Melvin said.

This is where San Diego also could have an advantage.

“Typically we get long starts out of Joe (Musgrove), which should help us leading off five days in a row,” Melvin said.

The old adage when it comes to playoff series in all sports is that when a road team takes one of the first two games, it is in the driver’s seat.

In theory, that’s true for the Phillies. They won Game 1 in San Diego and now earned the chance to win three home games and not have to go back on the road again.

“I think for the most part we did our job in San Diego, and now we feel pretty good being home here for the next three games in front of our own fans,” Thomson said.

In the case of this series, though, it feels more like the Padres earned a split by taking one game from the Wheeler/Nola set and now have the advantage because of their pitching depth.

Melvin, however, wasn’t entertaining the theory.

“These things flip around so quickly that your mindset can change from game to game,” he said. “We’ve been pretty good over the course of the season about just worrying about one game.

“I don’t think we look too far into it. We know we’re here for three games. We’re going to try to win all of them individually.”

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Musgrove, a hulking, 6-foot-5 right-hander, felt the wrath of a Citi Field crowd during his first start of the postseason, a win-or-go-home Game 3 of the wild-card round. That game had a bit of drama when Mets manager Buck Showalter, with the Mets down 4-0 in the sixth inning, asked umpires to check Musgrove’s ear for a foreign substance.

The game continued and Musgrove stayed in after the crew found nothing out of the ordinary. Musgrove later made a few gestures toward the New York dugout as he continued to mow through the lineup.

“I almost like pitching on the road a little more than I do pitching at home,” Musgrove said Thursday. “There’s something about kind of having your back up against the wall and having everyone weighing down on you, something about that allows me to tap into a different level.”

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While he wouldn’t say much about the pitching beyond Game 3, Thomson said the Phillies will go back to Bryson Stott and Brandon Marsh Friday night after Matt Vierling and Edmundo Sosa played Wednesday. Thomson said there wouldn’t be any other changes as far as the batting order goes. ... JT Realmuto was named Thursday as a finalist for the NL Gold Glove Award.