Zack Wheeler’s right arm and a dead baseball help Phillies hold off Padres, 3-0

It was the hardest-hit ball of the night, but the fly ball that San Diego’s Eric Hosmer rocketed Wednesday night at Citizens Bank Park hardly made it to the warning track. He held his bat outward after connecting with Zack Wheeler’s fastball in the seventh inning of the Phillies’ 3-0 win over the Padres and watched for a moment as the ball sailed toward right field with the look of a two-run homer.

But the 107.9 mph scorcher was just a loud out — one of the 21 outs Wheeler recorded in seven scoreless innings — as the Phillies seemed to benefit from baseballs that just don’t seem to be carrying this season like they did in recent seasons.

“The ball giveth and the ball taketh, I guess,” first baseman Rhys Hoskins said.

Wheeler was excellent on Wednesday as he recorded nine strikeouts, no walks, and allowed just four hits. The only trouble he seemed to face all night was when Hosmer’s fly ball hung over South Philadelphia.

“I thought it was gone,” Wheeler said. “He was smiling at me, too. I don’t know if he thought it was gone, too. I just thought it was a well‐hit ball and I turned around and [Nick] Castellanos was running to it. Thank goodness.”

After a delay to his spring training, Wheeler is starting to look like the pitcher who finished second last season in the voting for the National League’s Cy Young Award. He has allowed just three runs and 17 hits in his last four starts with 30 strikeouts and six walks over 26 innings.

“You can just see it, especially later in games, that he looks stronger and his stuff is as crisp as it was in the first inning,” Hoskins said.

Major League Baseball told each team in spring training that it had modified the balls this season to deaden them after a surge in homers. Each team is also storing baseballs in a humidor to bring each ball to an average humidity in an attempt to keep balls in the park.

The Phillies were frustrated by that earlier this season when the lineup they spent the winter building seemed to have trouble lifting the ball over the fences. But there were no complaints on Wednesday.

“The ball was over the middle of the plate, he took a really good swing, and it sounded well,” Wheeler said of Hosmer’s bid for a homer. “Maybe it’s the balls, I don’t know. I’ll take it.”

Manager Joe Girardi said he “was a little worried” when the ball left Hosmer’s bat. Hoskins said he’s seen a lot of baseballs travel like that and leave this ballpark. But this one didn’t.

Wheeler retired the next two batters, moved the Phillies closer to a needed win, and ended his night on his own terms. It was a strong finish, but the pitcher wasn’t completely satisfied.

“It’s definitely not the best I’ve felt,” Wheeler said. “But the results were there, so I’ll take it. We still have a little bit to work on, so we’ll get there. I think it’s still just building up a little bit. It was good, but there’s more to work on.”

José Alvarado retired the three batters he faced in the eighth and Corey Knebel needed just four pitches to close out the ninth as the bullpen shut the door after imploding Sunday at Dodger Stadium.

“That’s kind of how you draw it up, right,” Girardi said. “Quick outs, and don’t use a lot of pitches so you’re available the next day.”

Knebel allowed two runs on Sunday in the ninth inning in a walk‐off loss to the Dodgers to complete a weekend of bullpen struggles. It was a different story on Wednesday.

“I know we have the guys down there to do it,” Wheeler said. “They did their jobs tonight and it’s nice.”

The Phillies hit so many homers last week that it made it feel like an eternity when they went two straight games without hitting one. Hoskins fixed that in the third inning with a solo shot to left field off Blake Snell, who lasted just 3 ⅔ innings in his season debut for the Padres before being chased by Odúbel Herrera’s RBI double in the fourth.

It was Hoskins’ seventh homer of the season. He had one of the team’s 14 blasts during their seven-game road trip to Seattle and Los Angeles. The Phils have 24 homers this month with 13 games remaining, putting them in position to challenge the franchise record of homers in May (42) set by the 2008 world champions.

Snell, the 2018 American League Cy Young Award winner with Tampa Bay, allowed three runs on five hits and threw 84 pitches. He was scratched from his first start in April due to a sore groin and was held back until Wednesday. The Phillies were stymied Tuesday by Mike Clevinger, chased Snell, and will meet Yu Darvish on Thursday as they face each of San Diego’s top three starters.

J.T. Realmuto’s RBI single in the first inning might be a sign that he’s pulling himself out a rut that Girardi said became worse when the catcher went away from a swing adjustment he had made during spring training with new hitting coach Kevin Long.

Realmuto entered Wednesday hitting just .154 with two extra-base hits over his last 14 games. His average exit velocity (86.8 mph), hard-hit percentage (35.6%) and barrel percentage (4.6%) all ranked this season in the bottom third of baseball, and the “Best Catcher in Baseball” was slumping.

“He started to struggle with some of the new stuff that he was doing and I think he went back to his old way and I think it created more struggles,” Girardi said. “I think we just have to get him going. You’re going to see more of what he was doing in the beginning.”

Girardi said Realmuto would ditch his “huge leg kick” as Long instructed him before the season to use a more compact stride. Wednesday provided a glimpse of progress.