The Philadelphia Phillies fairytale World Series run came to a crushing end in Game 6, as the Houston Astros officially clinched the title with a 4-1 victory in front of their home crowd. It was a tough way to end the season for the Phillies, who improbably went from just barely sneaking into the playoffs as the six seed in the National League playoff bracket all the way to the World Series.
Ultimately, Philadelphia ran out of gas, and against a deadly Houston team, that simply cannot happen. In the aftermath, though, many fans were confused by manager Rob Thompson's decision to pull starting pitcher Zack Wheeler right before Yordan Alvarez hit his eventual game-winning home run in the bottom of the sixth inning.
Some fans have gone as far to say this decision cost the Phillies the World Series, but that simply isn't the case. Let's take a look at three reasons why Philadelphia's decision to pull Wheeler from the action early in Game 6 wasn't what cost the Phillies their shot at winning a championship, and examine why the decision was the correct one.
3. The Phillies lineup didn't hold up their end of the bargain
It doesn't feel fair to place the immense blame of losing a championship on one decision when a huge faction of the Phillies failed to show up down the stretch of this series. The decision to pull Wheeler will be amplified because it came in Game 6, which ended up allowing Houston to win it all. But it's clear the lineup didn't give their pitching staff much help later in this series, which is why the blame cannot be fully placed on this one move.
The Phillies lineup helped their team jump out to a 2-1 series lead against Houston after they scored a combined 15 runs over the first three games of the series. Over the final three games of the series, though, the Astros scored just three total runs. It's not as if their pitching staff was giving up an obscene amount of runs, as the Astros only averaged 3.7 runs per game in this six game series.
Philadelphia's lineup had chances to flip the script of this series on quite a few occasions, but they failed to do so. It's why the motto of “win as a team, lose as a team” stands true. The decision to pull Wheeler didn't pan out, but to blame the entire series on that one decision is wildly shortsighted, and ignores how other players didn't exactly pull their weight either.
2. Zack Wheeler was suffering from arm fatigue and the Astros were getting to him
It is the World Series, but had this been any other game, Wheeler probably wouldn't have gotten the start. Wheeler was dealing with arm fatigue in the buildup to this game, but he gutted it out and was dealing up until the sixth inning. But once he ran into trouble in the bottom of the sixth, Thompson made the call to pull him.
Wheeler threw only 70 pitches, and probably could have gone longer. But the Phillies had just a 1-0 lead, and Wheeler was going through their lineup for the third time in the game. Considering how there were runners on the corners with just one out in the inning, there's a very decent chance Wheeler would have given up runs himself.
Considering how the Phillies lineup only mustered one run in this game, it doesn't seem like it would have mattered had Wheeler stayed in this game. But he did his job in Game 6 by getting through 5.1 innings before turning it over to the bullpen. That should have been enough, but the fact that it wasn't isn't Wheeler's fault, and it also isn't Thompson's fault for making the call to pull him.
1. The Phillies made the right call setting up a lefty-on-lefty matchup for Yordan Alvarez
This all goes without saying that Thompson made the right decision from a baseball sense to pull Wheeler when he did. Wheeler can say he was caught off guard by the decision, but Philadelphia's season was on the line. He did his job in this game, and Thompson made the correct call to get a lefty-on-lefty matchup against arguably the Astros most dangerous hitter in Alvarez.
Alvarez isn't your typical left-handed hitter in the sense that he can hit pretty much anything thrown his way, but conventional wisdom says that a lefty-on-lefty matchup is better than a tiring righty who is facing Alvarez for the third time. Maybe bringing Jose Alvarado, who had a 4.09 ERA in the playoffs this season prior to Game 6, wasn't the right call, but Thompson didn't have many other options.
From a purely baseball perspective, this was the right call by Thompson. It didn't pan out, but that's more of a credit to the Astros than it is a fault of the Phillies. Houston was the better team, and while the better team doesn't necessarily always win, the Astros talent was too much to overcome in this series. There's no shame in that, but it's clear that the decision to pull Wheeler was not the reason Philadelphia lost this series.
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